Under some forms, the hornbill theory becomes respectable. There are many
peaceful families, innocent though torpid, where the only dream of
existence is to have plenty of quiet, plenty of food, and plenty of
well-fed children. For them this African household is a sufficient model.
The wife is "a home body." The husband is "a good provider." These are
honest people, and have a right to speak. The hornbill theory is only
dishonest when it comes--as it often comes--from women who lead the
life, not of good stay-at-home fowls, but of paroquets and
hummingbirds,--who sorrowfully bemoan the active habits of enlightened
women, while they themselves

"Bear about the mockery of woe
To midnight dances and the public show."

It is from these women, in Washington, New York, and elsewhere, that the
loudest appeal for the hornbill standard of domesticity proceeds. Put them
to the test, and give them their chicken-salad and champagne through a hole
in the wall only, and see how they like it.

But even the most honest and peaceful conservatives will one day admit that
the hornbill is not the highest model. Plato thought that "the soul of our
grandame might haply inhabit the body of a bird;" but Nature has kindly
provided various types of bird-households to suit all varieties of taste.
The bright orioles, filling the summer boughs with color and with song, are
as truly domestic in the freedom of their airy nest as the poor hornbills
who ignorantly make home into a dungeon. And certainly each new generation
of orioles, spreading free wings from that pendent cradle, affords a
happier illustration of judicious nurture than is to be found in the
uncouth little offspring of the hornbills, which Wallace describes as "so
flabby and semi-transparent as to resemble a bladder of jelly, furnished