Virginia Sharpe Patterson - Dickey Downy
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Virginia Sharpe Patterson >> Dickey Downy
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The cloud had vanished from Elsie's face, and all was serene again.
Her mother seemed somewhat ashamed of her little girl's bad manners, as
was shown by her apologetic air when she observed to the trimmer that
Elsie was as queer a child as ever lived. When she set her mind on a
thing, it was so hard for her to give it up.
They waited for the new hat to be trimmed, and on its completion Elsie
seized it and put it on her head, much against her mother's wishes, who
preferred not to have it displayed until the next day at Sunday-school;
but the insistence of the child was so vehement that again the mother
thought it wise to yield, and Elsie tripped off in triumph to the other
end of the store with the black wings showing out stiffly on each side
of her head. The mother remarked, with forced playfulness, as she
watched her, "Elsie's a g-r-e-a-t girl, I tell you. You can't fool
her."
[Illustration: The Baltimore Oriole.]
As the trimmer returned the boxes to the shelves, I overheard her
mutter, "Oh, yes, Elsie is a g-r-e-a-t girl, a perfect little jewel, so
well-behaved. Her polite manners show her careful home training; quite
a reflection on her dear mamma." But from the peculiar laugh she gave
I didn't believe she really meant it as praise.
When the nights grew longer and the store was closed for the evening,
the milliner and her husband usually spent an hour or two in the back
room looking over the newspaper which came every day from the city.
The man always turned at once to the wheat reports, and the price of
wool, which he read aloud to his wife, though I could see she did not
care very much to hear about them; but she hunted first for the fashion
notes and the bargains in millinery before she read the other news.
One night while thus engaged she suddenly exclaimed:
"Here's something that is bound to hurt trade."
By trade she meant the millinery business.
"What is it?" her husband inquired, looking over the top of the page he
held.
"Why, here's a lot of women who have been meeting in a convention in
Chicago and getting excited and losing their heads, and passing some
ridiculous resolutions."
"What kind of resolutions?" he inquired.
"Oh, they've been denouncing the fashion of wearing birds. They belong
to a society called--called--something or other, I forget what. Let me
see," and she ran her eye down the column. "Oh, yes, here it is. They
are members of the O'Dobbin society, and they got so wrought up on the
subject they took the feathers out of their hats right there in the
meeting and vowed never to wear bird trimming again. Well, if such
outlandish notions spread, you'll soon see how it will injure the
millinery trade."
"Pshaw! you needn't worry. The protests of a handful of fanatical
women can't do your business any harm," he answered carelessly, and
turned to his paper again.
She shook her head. "I'm not so sure of that. I think there are some
women in this very town just cranky enough to endorse such foolishness.
There's Mrs. Judge Jenkins for one. I've never yet been able to sell
her a real stylish hat. She won't wear birds, because she thinks it's
wicked. I hope to goodness she won't consider it her duty to start an
O'Dobbin society here."
From the depths of my heart I blessed those kind women who had shown
their disapproval of the nefarious traffic in bird life, and had
pledged themselves to our protection. True, they were but a handful
compared with the millions whom the god Fashion still held in bondage,
only a handful who were fighting the good fight; but would not the
influence of their noble example and their pledge of mercy be spread
abroad till all the women in Christian lands would join in the crusade
against the wrong?
In my joy at the thought I chirped so loudly that the lady looked up
from her reading. She seemed suddenly to recall a thought as she
glanced at my cage, for she said, "I must not forget to ask Katharine
if she can take the bird home with her next week and keep it while
Polly is gone to the country. I'll be sure to forget to feed it.
Anyway, I haven't time to bother with it."
The day before Polly left for the country I heard her inquiring for the
"Daily," which I remembered was the name they called the newspaper
containing the account of the noble city ladies who had pledged
themselves not to wear us any more.
"Tuesday's paper?" her mother asked; she was busy at the time fastening
a poor, little, mute swallow on a rich hat. "Perhaps it was thrown
behind the counter. Did you want it for any special purpose?"
Polly replied that she wanted to read something in it.
"Well, it is probably torn up by this time," said her mother. "If it
isn't on the table in the back room, or on the shelf by the window, or
behind the counter, I'm sure I don't know where it is."
The young clerk who was arranging the goods on the counter had heard
Polly's inquiry, and she now asked if it was the newspaper that told
about the women who thought it wrong to wear birds. It seemed to me
that Polly hesitated a little as she replied that that was the very
paper she wanted.
"Goodness, child, is that the piece you want to read?" Her mother's
voice sounded rather sharp, as if she were vexed. "I hope that subject
hasn't turned your head too," but she said no more, for just then a
customer coming in, she laid down her work and went forward to greet
her.
Polly looked troubled, but she confided to Miss Katharine that she
wanted very much to read the account.
"Fortunately I cut the piece out to give to my sister. I knew she'd be
interested in it, but I have always forgotten to give it to her," said
the clerk. She seemed to be very much in earnest as she continued, "I
do wish something could be done to save the birds. If women must have
feathers, why can't they content themselves with wearing ostrich tips
and plumes? There is nothing cruel or wicked in the way they are
procured."
She opened the little satchel hanging at her belt, and from it took a
folded slip of paper which she handed to Polly, telling her she might
have it to read, and when she had finished it to please bring it back
to her. Polly thanked her, and ran away to a quiet corner of the back
room, where I saw her slowly reading the clipping as she rocked herself
in her pretty birch chair. When she had read it through, she sat for
some time looking very thoughtful. At last she rose and carried the
paper back to Miss Katharine, halting a moment as she passed my cage,
to whisper softly:
"Dickey Downy, you dear little fellow, I'm going upstairs right this
very minute to take the feathers off my best Sunday hat and I'm never,
never going to wear birds any more."
CHAPTER XII
TWO SLAVES OF FASHION
I do not like the fashion of your garments.
--_Shakespeare._
I'm sure thou hast a cruel nature and a bloody.
--_Shakespeare._
Two young ladies, fashionably dressed, met each other that afternoon
just in front of our side window, which had been raised to let in the
air. From the warmth of their greeting I saw that they were on terms
of friendly intimacy.
One of the girls stood a little out of the range of my vision,
therefore I could not hear her voice when she talked, if, indeed, she
had a chance to say anything, but the vivacious monologue carried on by
her friend was amply sufficient to show the theme which interested them.
How glibly that pretty creature chattered! How fast the words flew!
How she arched her eyebrows and shrugged her shoulders and winked her
eyes and wrinkled her forehead and pursed her rosy lips and tilted her
nose and gesticulated with her slender hand and tapped the pavement
with her umbrella point, passing from each phase of expression to the
next with a rapidity truly wonderful. Occasionally she went through
with these strange grimaces all at once. She was indeed a whirlwind of
language, an avalanche of emotion.
Her voice was high pitched and shrill, so that every one on the street
must have heard her as she exclaimed:
"Oh, Nell, how perfectly lovely your new hat is! Turn around so that I
can see the other side. Oh-h, ah-h, that darling little bird with its
glossy plumage among the velvet is too sweet for anything! If anything
it is prettier than Kate Smith's hat with the thrush's head and wings,
although I'll admit hers is awfully stylish. You ought to see my new
hat. Ah, I tell you it's a beauty; soft crown of silvery stuff, and on
one side a tall aigrette and a dear little cedar-bird, and toward the
back is the cutest, cunningest humming-bird with its tiny green body
and long bill. It looks as if it were ready to fly or to sing. I
selected the trimming for sister May's new hat too. It is brown velvet
and has an oriole on it; you know they are so showy and bright it makes
you almost think you are in the woods. At Madame Oiseau Mort's, where
I get my millinery, there was another hat I had a notion to take. It
was built up with robins' wings and part of a tern was on it too, I
believe--just lovely! but afterward I was glad I didn't buy it, for
that decoration is more common. I counted nine hats in church last
Sunday trimmed with gulls. Of course they were pretty, for a handsome
bird makes any hat pretty.
"By the way, Nell, I must tell you something perfectly ridiculous! Do
you know papa pretends it's wicked for women to wear birds on their
hats or trim their gowns with feather trimming? Did you ever? I told
him we'd be a mighty sorry-looking set going around like a lot of
female Dunkards or Salvation Army women, without a bit of style, and he
said those women hadn't the sin on their souls of wearing birds that
had been killed on purpose to minister to their vanity; that he'd
rather be a peaceful-faced Dunkard woman or Salvationist with her plain
bonnet and her gentle heart than a gay society butterfly with her empty
head loaded down with dead birds.
"Isn't it perfectly horrid for him to talk like that? He is such an
old fogy in his ideas he actually makes me tired. Then he went on to
say that never again could he believe that women are the tender-hearted
creatures they have always been supposed to be, when they show
themselves so eager to be decked with the innocent songsters whose
lives are sacrificed by the million on the altar of fashion; the men
have always been taught that woman's nature was morally superior to
theirs, but we'd have to give up this criminal fad which we have
persisted in at such a fearful price of bird life before we could be
regarded as other than monstrously cruel and bloody. However, he
prophesied that the fashion can't continue much longer anyway, because
there soon won't be any birds left, and then, he says, we'll have a
world without its sweetest music. It will be hushed by the folly of
woman.
"Oh, Nell, don't you dislike to have anybody lecture you like that? It
makes one feel so uncomfortable. I don't suppose it's so very wrong to
wear bird trimming or our minister's wife wouldn't do it. You know her
black velvet hat with that big bird on it with the red points on the
wings, is one of the most striking hats that come to church. And her
feather muff is so elegant, awfully expensive too. And what would her
hat look like without that bird on it, I'd like to know? So if it
isn't wicked for her it isn't wicked for us, Nell, and I'm not going to
give up looking nice just to please papa. He'd like to have me dress
as antiquated as old Mrs. Noah when she came out of the ark, but I'm
not going to encourage him in his old-fashioned notions. And here,
Nell, just listen to this! Don't you think, he says the Episcopal
Prayer Book ought to be revised for the women worshipers and omit that
part of the litany where it says, 'From pride, vain-glory, and
hypocrisy, good Lord, deliver us.' What fol-de-rol!" And being out of
breath she stopped talking and they walked away down the street
together.
CHAPTER XIII
DICKEY'S VISIT
Kind hearts are more than coronets.
--_Tennyson._
Plainly furnished and small was the house to which I was taken by Miss
Katharine to stay during Polly's absence at her grandmother's in the
country. But though it was destitute of fine furnishings, it was the
abode of peace and love, and its lowly roof sheltered noble and kindly
hearts. The two sisters lived there alone, supported mainly by
Katharine's earnings in the millinery store, though occasionally the
sister, who was lame, added something to their little income by making
paper flowers and other articles of bright tissues. It was her
business to keep the house while Miss Katharine was at the shop, and
very long and lonely the hours must have seemed to her while her sister
was away.
The first day I was there a boy whom she addressed as John Charles came
to the house. Apparently he had been carefully trained, for he raised
his cap when the lame girl opened the door to his knock. His manners
were fine, for he remained standing after he entered until she had
first seated herself, as if to say, "A gentleman will not sit while a
lady stands."
He had come to inquire if she wished to buy some cooking apples.
"They are very nice," said John Charles briskly, quite as if he were an
old salesman. "No mashed or decayed ones among them."
"I have been wanting some apples," said Eliza. "If I knew what yours
were like I might buy some."
"I have a few here to show," and John Charles drew from a small paper
sack one or two bright rosy apples. "There, try one," he said. "You
will find them nice and juicy and sour enough to cook quickly."
Eliza bit into one and expressed her approval of the fruit. "They will
make delicious apple-sauce, I'm sure," she said. After inquiring the
price she told the young merchant he might carry in a peck.
With a business-like flourish John Charles took a small note-book and
pencil from his pocket and wrote something at the top of the leaf.
"I'm not delivering now," he said as he returned the note-book to his
pocket. "I'm only taking orders; but I'll have your apples here in an
hour."
Eliza bit her lip to keep back a smile. A boy in knee pants
transacting business like a grown man, appeared quite amusing to her.
"Oh, I see," she said. "You take orders for your goods. You don't
sell from door to door."
"No, indeed!" answered John Charles with a lofty air. "That's too much
like peddling. I won't peddle. I prefer to get regular customers and
take orders and fill them."
While he had been talking he had been glancing toward me where I hung
in the window, and he now politely asked if he might come to look at
me. Eliza gave a surprised consent, but watched the boy closely as he
stood near and chirped to me calling me, "Po-o-o-r Dickey Downy," as
soon as he found out my name. I saw from the way Eliza kept her eyes
on his movements that she was expecting he would do something to hurt
me, but in this she was pleasantly disappointed, for he never once
touched my cage and cooed as softly when he spoke to me as Polly
herself might have done.
I was quite afraid of him at first, for ever since my experience with
the wicked schoolboys who clubbed us in the linden trees, and my later
experience with Joe, I disliked boys very much.
[Illustration: The Bobolink.]
When John Charles had bidden Eliza "good-morning" and tipped his hat
again and the door closed after him, she said to me: "Why, Dickey, that
was a new kind of a boy! He never once tried to hurt you or to scare
you. It shows that all boys are not rough, and I shall always like
John Charles, for he is a little gentleman."
To this sentiment I fully agreed, and I thought, "Alas! why are not all
boys as gentle as John Charles?"
In a few hours I felt as much at home with Eliza as if I had always
lived there, and I was much pleased when I heard her tell Katharine at
the supper table the next evening how much she had enjoyed having me
with her.
"A bird is ever so much better company than a clock," she said; "though
when I'm here by myself I always like to hear the clock tick. It seems
as if I were not so entirely alone. But a bird is better. I talked to
Dickey to-day and he twittered back. He has such a cute way of perking
his little head to one side just as knowing as you please, and he acts
exactly as if he were considering whether he should answer 'yes' or
no' to what I say, and then it is such fun to watch him smooth down his
feathers. He washes and irons them so nicely and works away as
industriously as if he were afraid he'd lose his 'job.'"
Miss Katharine rose from the table and stuck a lump of sugar for me to
taste between the wires of my cage.
"I am surrounded by poor dead birds in the store all day," she
observed, "and spend so much of my time sewing their wings and heads
and tails on hats and sort boxfuls of them for customers to look at,
that even a living bird saddens me."
"Yes, it must be very depressing. What a shame to kill them; they are
so cute and pretty and such happy little creatures! See how cunning he
looks nibbling at that sugar," and the sister joined Miss Katharine in
watching me.
"But do you know, Kathy, I don't believe that women would continue
wearing bird trimmings if they stopped a minute to think about it. It
doesn't seem wrong to them because they never considered the question.
They simply haven't thought about it at all."
"Somebody set the fashion and they all followed like a flock of sheep,"
answered the other with a sneering laugh.
"Yes, that's just the way. They go along without thinking. They only
know it is the style, and they don't stop to inquire whether it can be
indulged in innocently or hurtfully. Now I believe that if their
attention was particularly called to it, the most of them would quit
it."
Miss Katharine brightened into a smile and half unclasped her little
satchel.
"If a bird could talk," pursued the lame girl, "what a revelation it
could make. What lovely things it could tell us of that upper kingdom
of the air where it floats and the distant land it sees! What sweet
secrets of nature it knows that man with all his wisdom can never find
out. And then its gift of song! Why, if thousands and thousands of
dollars were spent in training the finest voice in the world it could
never equal the notes of a bird. A woman who could perfectly imitate a
lark's carol would make her fortune in a month. The world would go
wild over her."
"But as she can't do that she has the lark killed to stick on her hat,
and then she goes wild over it," interrupted Miss Kathy.
Her sister smiled at this outburst and continued: "While I was working
at that morning-glory wreath to-day I couldn't help but watch this bird
of Polly's with its innocent little antics, and it made me see more
than ever how wrong it is to cage and kill them. I just felt as though
I ought to do something to help save the birds and, Kathy, I wonder if
we were to invite some of our friends here some evening and call their
attention to the subject, and explain the wrong to them, if we couldn't
do some good that way? Maybe they'd decide not to wear birds on their
hats."
"We might try, sister, I would be perfectly willing to try; but I'm
afraid it wouldn't do much good, for we have but little influence. As
long as fashionable and wealthy ladies will do it, the poorer classes
will not give it up very readily."
"But they have hearts which can be appealed to. They have feelings
which can be roused," answered the lame girl eagerly. "Being alone so
much I have more time to think over these things than the shop girls
who are hurried and busy all day, and perhaps nobody has ever tried to
show them how wrong it is; but I really believe some of them could be
influenced, if once they would seriously think of the wrong they are
doing. That is the reason, Kathy, I suggested to get a lot of them
together to talk about saving the birds."
The gentle cripple had never even heard of the great Audubon. She did
not know that societies existed in many States called by the name of
the distinguished naturalist, engaged in the same merciful work.
Miss Katharine drew from the satchel the paper clipping and handed it
to her sister, saying: "This is a coincidence surely; I cut this out of
the daily paper at the store some time ago, intending to give it to
you, but I always forgot it. It is an account of the proceedings of a
convention in one of the big cities. You will see by reading it that
somebody else has been thinking your identical thoughts."
"How lovely that is!" exclaimed Eliza when she had carefully read the
notice. "How I should have enjoyed being at that meeting. We will
help those people all we can, Kathy, by stirring up our acquaintances
here. You invite the girls for tomorrow night and I'll have the house
ready for them."
That I had been an inspiration to this gentle girl in her work of mercy
was a great joy to me, and all the next day I was constantly bursting
into a round of cheerful twitters and I swung myself in my hoop as fast
as I could make it go.
The best room was swept and dusted with the greatest care, and a few
extra chairs moved in from other parts of the house. My cage was
transferred from its usual hook to the parlor, and about eight o'clock
the guests thronged in and soon every seat was filled. They were
principally girls who were clerks in stores, or worked in shops and
offices, and many of them were very smartly dressed. A few, like Miss
Katharine and her sister, were more plainly attired; but all were
lively and full of girlish fun and seemed to enjoy being together. My
cage hung in view of every one, and I was proud to be selected as an
object-lesson by the lame hostess in her introductory appeal to her
guests to help save the birds. She so presented the facts that before
the evening was over she had roused an enthusiasm in some of them
almost equal to her own, and several pledges were given not to wear
birds again.
"There is something new in the way of womanly cruelty which isn't so
well known as the destruction of the birds," remarked one of the
company. "The humane society ought to get after the women who wear
baby lamb trimming."
"The way sealskins are procured is also very cruel," said another girl.
"I have never read much about it," answered Eliza, "but it surely
cannot be so wicked as killing song birds, because the sealskin is an
article of clothing which serves to keep the body warm, while a dead
bird sewed on your hat is merely for show and doesn't keep you warm or
cool or anything else."
"It is not the use that is made of the sealskin that is wrong, but the
cruelty of the hunters in getting it," replied the young lady who had
first spoken. "They say when the parent seal is captured the young one
cries for it exactly as a human baby cries after its mother. It is
most pitiful to hear it wail. The branding of the poor creatures is a
most brutal thing."
"Why are they branded?" asked Kathy.
"Well, you know, for some years there has been a great strife between
the United States and Canada, principally over the seal fisheries.
Each was afraid the other would get more than its share. To put a stop
to the seals being entirely killed off, as was likely to be the case
since so many poachers were in the business, one of our government
agents suggested that the seals should be branded. They drive them
into pens and burn them with red-hot irons."
"It isn't likely that any of us will be called upon to deny ourselves
the wearing of baby lamb, as it is quite expensive, but we can condemn
it by word if not by example," observed Kathy.
The good-nights were said and the company dispersed, not so jolly and
noisy as they came, but with thoughtfulness arising from awakened
consciences. The humble lame girl had sowed the good seed.
Polly was to come back from her grandmother's the next week and, though
I looked forward with pleasure to being with her again, I felt sorry to
leave this peaceful home. The worthy lives and beautiful aims of these
obscure girls of whom the world knew nothing was a sweet remembrance to
carry with me.
"Thank Polly for me for Dickey Downy's visit and tell her whenever she
wants to go away anywhere I'll be glad to take care of him for her,"
Eliza said when the time came for me to go.
She gave the cage into Miss Kathy's hand. I chirped a farewell to her
and she whistled back to me and we parted to see each other no more.
CHAPTER XIV
THE COUNTRY SCHOOL
Blessed are the merciful, for they shall obtain mercy.
--_Bible._
Polly's welcome to me was most cordial. She was bright as a cricket
and full of chat about her visit. With her usual care she examined my
cage closely to see that everything was in order and petted and praised
me for a little while to my full content, then ran to Miss Kathy to
tell her of the new story book which had been presented to her while
away.
"And I am going to read you the stories some day," she added.
Her young playmates flocked in to see her and as I listened to their
glad voices my heart yearned more than ever for my comrades of the
woods, for a thought of spring was in the air.
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