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.