Read Ebook: Dickey Downy: The Autobiography of a Bird by Patterson Virginia Sharpe

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Ebook has 598 lines and 34467 words, and 12 pages

THE RULER WITH THE IRON HAND

One morning as we flew across the open space which lay between the wood and the wheat fields, we noticed two gentlemen in the orchard who were carefully examining the trees, peering curiously into the cracks of the rough bark or unfolding the curled leaves.

As we came nearer we discovered that one of them was the owner of the place, the father of Miss Dorothy and Miss Katie. The other was a thin gentleman in spectacles, who held a magnifying glass through which he intently looked at a twig which he had broken off.

"Is it anything like the scurfy-bark louse?" inquired the colonel.

"The same thing exactly. It occurs more commonly in the apple, but it infects the pear and peach trees. You will find it on the mountain ash, and sometimes on the currant bushes," he answered.

The colonel asked him if he would recommend spraying to get rid of the pests, and was advised to begin immediately, using tobacco water or whale-oil soap.

"Unfortunately the birds are not so numerous as they used to be. They are being destroyed so rapidly, more's the pity! These grounds and woods yonder were formerly alive with birds of all kinds. Flocks of the purple grakle used to follow the plow and eat up the worms at a great rate. You are familiar with their habits? You know they are most devoted parents. I have often watched them feeding their young. The little ones have such astonishingly good appetites that it keeps the old folks busy to supply them with enough to eat. They work like beavers as long as daylight lasts, going to and from the fields carrying on each return trip a fat grub or a toothsome grasshopper."

"Who was he?"

"The grand, the great Abraham Lincoln," responded the professor impressively.

"Well, he'd be the very one to do just such a kind deed as that," was the colonel's hearty response. "No man ever lived who had a bigger, more merciful heart than 'Honest Abe.'"

For myself I did not know who Abraham Lincoln was. I had never heard the name before, but I was quite sure from the proud tone of the professor's voice that he was a distinguished man, as I was equally sure from the story of his pity for the helpless bird, that he was a good man.

"You mentioned the industry of the grakle a moment ago," resumed the professor. "Do you know that the redwing is equally as useful, and besides he is a delightful singer?

"The redwing flutes his o-ka-lee.

"Do you remember that line, colonel?" and the professor softly whistled a strain in imitation of a bird's note. "The services of our little brothers of the air are exceedingly valuable to the horticulturist. And think of the damage done to arboriculture by the woodborers alone were it not for the help given by the birds. Did you ever notice those borers at work, colonel? Some writer has well described them as animated gimlets. They just stick their pointed heads into the bark and turn their bodies around and around and out pours a little stream of sawdust. The birds would pick off such pests fast enough if people would only give them a chance and not scare them off with shotguns."

"Yes, the birds earn their way, there is no denying it, and he is a very stupid farmer who begrudges them the little corn and wheat they take from the fields. The account is more than balanced by the good they do." Then the conversation ceased, for the colonel and his friend moved off to inspect the quince bushes.

Pleased by the praises they had bestowed on us for our efforts in cleaning the fruit trees and cornfields of injurious insects, I went to work with new vigor to get out some bugs for my luncheon, and was thus pleasantly employed when a sharp twitter from my mother attracted my attention.

"Look, children!" she exclaimed. "Here come our young ladies with some company from the city. Be careful to notice what they have on their heads and then tell me what you think of our sweet, pretty ladies."

One of my brothers was swaying lightly on a little swing below me. I flew down hastily and placed myself on the next bough, where I could also get a good view of the ladies as they strolled toward us. They were in a very merry mood and each one seemed striving to say something more arousing than her companions. Miss Dorothy led the way, her arm linked in that of one of the stranger guests. Then followed the others with Miss Katie and Marian hand in hand in the rear. They were all very handsomely dressed, and having just returned from a drive had not yet removed their hats.

As they came under the tree where we were perched, which was a favorite spot with Miss Katie, they halted for some time and consequently I had an excellent opportunity to look, as my mother had bidden me.

And what did I see?

I saw six ladies' hats trimmed with dead birds. Fastened on sidewise, head downward, on one was a magnificent scarlet tanager, his body half concealed by folds of tulle, his fixed eye staring into vacancy. On another was the head and breast of a beautiful yellow-hammer; it was surmounted by the tall sweeping plumes of the egret, which this bird produces only at breeding time. Oh, how much joy and beauty the world had lost by that cruel deed! A third hat had two song sparrows imprisoned in meshes of star-studded lace. Their blithesome carol had been rudely silenced, their cheer to the world cut short, simply that they might be used for hat trimming. Of the remaining ones some were as yet unknown to me, but my mother, who had an extensive acquaintance with foreign birds, said that in that strange murderous mixture of millinery, far-away Australia had furnished the filmy feathers of the lyre bird which swept upward from a knot of ribbons, and that the forests of Germany had contributed the pretty green linnet. Dove's wings and the rosy breast of the grosbeak completed the barbarous display.

How my heart sickened as I gazed at these pleasant, refined, soft-voiced women flaunting the trophies of their cruelty in the beautiful sunlight.

Had they no compassion for the feathered mother who had been robbed of her young for the sake of a hat?

"Oh, how can they do such dreadful, such wicked things!" I moaned. My mother heard my lament and signaled for us to come up where she was perching.

"You see now who are our worst enemies," said she. "The cat preys on us to satisfy his bodily hunger, but women have no such excuse. We are not slaughtered to sustain their lives but to minister to their vanity. For years the women of Christian lands have waged their unholy war against us. We have been driven from our old haunts and forced to seek new places. We have been shot down by thousands every season until now many species are destroyed from the face of the earth. There is no security for us in any place. The hunter with his gun penetrates into the deepest forests, he perils his life in scaling the most dangerous cliffs, he wades through bog and marsh and mud and tracks us to our feeding grounds to surprise us with the deadly shot, and kills the mother hovering over the nest of her helpless offspring with as little compunction as if she were a poisonous reptile instead of a melodious joy-giver. And all this horrible slaughter is for women."

I grew feverish with excitement at this terrible arraignment of the "gentler sex."

"But why are they so cruel? Why do they do this wicked thing?" I asked.

"For the sake of Fashion," said my mother.

"Fashion, what is that?"

My mother was very patient with me, so when I asked questions she did not put me off by telling me she didn't know, or advise me to fly away and play, or tell me she was busy and couldn't be bothered just then, therefore she now took pains to make me understand.

"You ask me what is Fashion," she began. "Well, Fashion is an exacting ruler, a great, tyrannical god who has many, many worshipers, and these he rules with an iron hand. His followers cannot be induced to do anything contrary to his wishes. He sits on a high throne from which he dictates to his slaves what they must do. Often they do the most outrageous things, not because they like to, but because he demands it. He is constantly laying down new laws for their guidance, and some of these laws are so unreasonable and absurd that a part of his followers frequently threaten to rebel. They do not hold out against him long, for he manages to make it quite unpleasant for those who disobey him or refuse to come under his yoke."

"Has he any men slaves?" asked my brother.

"Yes, he has some slaves among men, but the larger number of those who wear his most galling fetters are women. If he but crooks his little finger these bond-women rush pell-mell in the direction he points. They are thus keen to do his bidding, because each woman who is the first to carry out his rules in her own particular town or neighborhood acquires great distinction in the eyes of the other worshipers."

"His slaves are nearly always rich women, aren't they?" asked my brother.

"If the chain is so heavy why don't they break it?" I asked impatiently.

"Because they are afraid," she replied.

"Afraid of the god?"

"No, no, child, they are afraid of each other. They are afraid the richer slaves, who are able to comply with the demands will laugh at them and ridicule them, and that is why they strain every nerve to follow the god's wishes. A slave, whether she is rich or poor, grows more cringing year by year, until at last she loses all her individuality, and becomes a mere echo of the god."

"What about the slaves who rebel at first and afterward yield?"

"Oh, they denounce the god very severely when he lays down some new law they don't happen to like, but as all the other slaves are obediently complying with it they dislike to be set off by themselves as different, and so they reluctantly give in after a time. Sometimes they try to compromise with the god by going half-way."

I inquired what the other slaves thought of that.

"They mildly tolerate them," said she. "Sometimes they look askance at them when they meet, and try to show their superiority as being obedient, full-blooded, genuine slaves, while the others are only lukewarm servants of the monarch!"

I wondered how the slaves regarded the woman who was independent and wouldn't worship the god.

My mother twittered softly at my question, and I knew she was smiling to herself. "Why," said she, "they call that kind of a woman a crank--whatever that is."

It was very evident that this god Fashion was a cruel tyrant, and it was clearly through his influence that we were killed, and I so told my mother. She looked very sorrowful as she replied:

"Yes, the women do not hate us. They do not dislike to hear our pretty songs; they have no revenge to gratify; but the god orders them to have us killed, and they do it. He tells them that to wear our poor mutilated dead bodies will add to their appearance, and so we are sacrificed on the altar of their vanity and silly pride. As members of humane societies women have denounced the docking of horses' tails as cruel, but from what I know of woman's indifference to the sufferings of the innocent birds, I venture to assert that were Fashion to say that she should trim her cloak with horse tails there would not be left an undocked horse in the country."

I knew my mother was very excited or she would never have been so vehement.

"Just hear how those birds twitter," remarked one of the ladies, looking up into our tree. "One would think they were holding an indignation meeting over something."

"Yes, the dear little things; I love to hear them chirp," commented Miss Katie, turning a sweet glance toward us, and then the party moved to go and we saw the six hats loaded with their mournful freight file off to the house. We followed the retreating hats with sad eyes till they were lost to view.

My brother broke the silence by asking, "Are there any Christian women who wear birds, and are among the god's worshipers?"

My mother's manner grew very grave and solemn. "That is not for me to say," she replied. "They know whether they are guiltless of our wholesale slaughter, and they know too, how the gentle, merciful Christ regarded us when he declared that 'not a sparrow is forgotten before God.'"

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