PLEAS FOR THE SPEECHLESS.
Sweet mercy is nobility’s true badge.—Shakespeare.
F all the birds should die, not a human being could live on earth, for the insects on which the birds live would increase so enormously as to destroy all vegetation.—Michelet.
Prof. E. E. Fish estimates that birds save, for agricultural purposes alone, annually, one hundred million dollars in the United States, and we are told that insect life in many places has increased so as to make human life almost unendurable.
The bravest are ever the most humane, the most gentle, the most kind; and if any one would be truly brave, let him learn to be gentle and tender to everyone and everything about him.—Rev. Arthur Sewell.
“Every first thing continues forever with a child; the first color, the first music, the first flowers paint the foreground of life. The first inner or outer object of love, injustice, or such like, throws a shadow immeasurably far along his after years.”—Jean Paul Richter.
We have long ago found that the great remedy for all these wrongs lies, not in law and prosecuting officers, but in the public and private schools; that a thousand cases of cruelty can be prevented by kind words and humane education, for every one that can be prevented by prosecution; and that if we are ever going to accomplish anything of permanent value for the protection of those whom our societies are organized to protect, it must be through the kind assistance of the teachers in our public and private schools.
We found another important fact, that when children were taught to be kind to animals, to spare in spring-time the mother-bird with its nest full of young, to pat the horses, and play with the dogs, and speak kindly to all harmless living creatures, they became more kind, not only to animals, but also to each other.—Geo. T. Angell.
I am in thorough accord with the proposition to have the birds protected, and my words cannot be clothed in too strong language. We are a nation of vandals. Birds make the choir of the heavens and should be protected.—Cardinal Gibbons.