She returned in a few moments with a small pamphlet, and thrust it hastily into my hand—my aunt was calling her—and hastened away.
I glanced down at a picture on the front page—a hare caught by the hind leg in a trap. A most agonised expression was on the little animal's face. Below the picture was the title of the story, "The Cost of a Skin." I dropped into a rocking-chair and read the story:
"Furs are luxuries, and it cannot be said in apology for the wrongs done in obtaining them that they are essential to human life. Skins and dead birds are not half so beautiful as flowers, or ribbons, or velvets, or mohair. They are popular because they are barbaric. They appeal to the vulgarians. Our ideas of art, like our impulses, and like human psychology generally, are still largely in the savage state of evolution. No one but a vulgarian would attempt to adorn herself by putting the dead bodies of birds on her head, or muffling her shoulders in grinning weasels, and dangling mink-tails. Indeed, to one who sees things as they are, in the full light of adult understanding, a woman rigged out in such cemeterial appurtenances is repulsive. She is a concourse of unnecessary funerals; she is about as fascinating, about as choice and ingenious in her decorations, as she would be, embellished with a necklace of human scalps. She should excite pity and contempt. She is a pathetic example of a being trying to add to her charms by high crimes and misdemeanours, and succeeding only in advertising her indifference to feeling.
"Of all the accessories gathered from every quarter of the earth to garnish human vanity, furs are the most expensive; for in no way does man show such complete indifference to the feelings of his victims as he does in the fur trade.
"The most of the skins used for furs are obtained by catching their owners in traps, and death in such cases comes usually at the close of hours, or even days, of the most intense suffering and terror. The principal device used by professional trappers is the steel-trap, the most villanous instrument of arrest that was ever invented by the human mind. It is not an uncommon thing for the savage jaws of this monstrous instrument to bite off the leg of their would-be captive at a single stroke. If the leg is not completely amputated by the snap of the terrible steel, it is likely to be so deeply cut as to encourage the animal to gnaw or twist it off. This latter is the common road to escape of many animals. Trappers say that on an average one animal in every five caught has only three legs."
"We'd never do it in China—never!" I cried, throwing the leaflet from me. "It is only this horrid, civilised America that could be so terribly cruel! I shall never wear my furs—never! I shall beg grandmother—she seems to be the only civilised being I know that has any heart—to allow me to go without them!"
I looked again at my leaflet, which I had picked from the floor, and continued to read the words of the author:
"I would rather be an insect—a bee or a butterfly—and float in dim dreams among the wild flowers of summer than be a man and feel the wrongs of this wretched world."
I rose from my chair and thrust my headed and tailed ermine scarf and muff into a box, and pushed them far back on the closet shelf.
"Stay there! Stay there!" I cried. "The Yellow Pearl will have nothing to do with civilisation!"
"Yellow Pearl," I said to myself, accusingly, half an hour later, "you know that they have fur in China, that the rich wear fur-lined garments." "Yes," I replied to that accusing I, "the rich wear fur-lined garments, but they procure the fur from animals that have to be killed for food, or for man's self-preservation. They are not caught in the cruel steely traps of America. Linings, mind you, linings," I reiterated, "to keep them warm, not the heads, tails, paws, claws, eyes, teeth of the little animals to bedizen their persons."