Autobiography of Seventy Years, Vol. 1-2

by George Frisbie Hoar

"If you will, we know how to pay you a hundred times over. We will teach your children to keep themselves clean and neat. We will show them how to live together in peace and love and to agree as we do in our nests. We will build pretty houses which you will like to see. We will play about your gardens and flower-beds,—ourselves like flowers on wings,—without any cost to you. We will destroy the wicked insects and worms that spoil your cherries and currants and plums and apples and roses. We will give you our best songs and make the spring more beautiful and the summer sweeter to you. Every June morning when you go out to the field, Oriole and Blackbird and Bobolink will fly after you and make the day more delightful to you; and when you go home tired at sundown, Vesper Sparrow will tell you how grateful we are. When you sit on your porch after dark, Fife Bird and Hermit Thrush and Wood Thrush will sing to you; and even Whip-poor-will will cheer up a little. We know where we are safe. In a little while all the birds will come to live in Massachusetts again, and everybody who loves music will like to make a summer home with you."

I thought it might, perhaps, strike the Legislature of Massachusetts and the public more impressively than a sober argument. The whole thing took only fifteen or twenty minutes. The petition was signed by all the song-birds of Massachusetts, and illustrated by Miss Ellen Day Hale with the portraits of the signers. It was presented to the Massachusetts Senate by the Honorable A. S. Roe, Senator from the Worcester District. The Legislature acted upon it and passed the following Statute:

"Whoever has in his possession the body of feathers of any bird whose taking or killing is prohibited by section four of chapter two hundred and seventy-six of the acts of the year eighteen hundred and eighty-six, or wears such feathers for the purpose of dress or ornament, shall be punished as provided in said section: provided that his act shall not be construed to prohibit persons having the certificate provided for in said sections from taking or killing such birds; and provided, further, that this act shall not apply to Natural History Associations, or to the proprietors of museums, or other collections for scientific purposes.

"Approved June 11, 1897."

The Statute was copied in several other States. I think the petition helped a good deal the healthy reaction which, owing largely to the efforts of humane societies and Natural History Associations and especially of some very accomplished ladies, has arrested the destruction of these beautiful ornaments of our woods and fields and gardens, "our fellow pilgrims on the journey of life," who have so much of humanity in them and who, like us, have their appointed tasks set to them by the great Creator.

CHAPTER XXIX THE A. P. A. CONTROVERSY

One very unreasonable, yet very natural excitement has stirred deeply the American people on several occasions in our history. It came to us by lawful inheritance from our English and Puritan ancestors. That is the bitter and almost superstitious dread of the Catholics, which has resulted more than once in riots and crimes, and more than once in the attempt to exclude them from political power in the country. This has sometimes taken the form of a crusade against all foreigners. But religious prejudice against the Catholics has been its chief inspiration.

I just said that this feeling, though absolutely unjustifiable, was yet quite natural, and that it came to us by lawful inheritance. I have always resisted it and denounced it to the utmost of my power. My father was a Unitarian. I was bred in that most liberal of all liberal faiths. But I have believed that the way to encounter bigotry is by liberality. If any man try to deprive you of your absolute right, begin to defend yourself by giving him his own. Human nature, certainly American human nature, will never, in my opinion, long hold out against that method of dealing.

Our people, so far as they are of English descent, learned from their fathers the stories of Catholic persecution and of the fires of Smithfield. Fox's "Book of Martyrs," one of the few books in the Puritan libraries, was, even down to the time of my youth, reverently preserved and read in the New England farmhouses.

So it was believed that it was only the want of power that prevented the Catholics from renewing the fires of Smithfield and the terrors of the Inquisition. It was believed that the infallibility and supremacy of the Pope bound the Catholic citizen to yield unquestioning obedience to the Catholic clergy in matters civil and political, as well as spiritual. There was a natural and very strong dread of the Confessional.