The glad feast everywhere, for things that love
The sunshine, and for things that love the shade.
THE FEATHER CRUSADE.
E. K. M.
JUST as the Audubon societies and the appeals of humanitarians in general have had some effect in lessening the demand for the aigrette for millinery purposes, and their banishment, as officially announced, from the helmets of the British army, there springs up a new fashion which, if generally adopted, will prove very discouraging—especially to the birds.
"She made a decided sensation last evening at the opera," says Miss Vanity's fond mamma. "Those blackbirds with outspread wings at either side of her head were simply fetching. They drew every lorgnette and every eye in the house upon her. Not a woman of fashion, or otherwise, I venture to say, will appear at a public function here-after without a pair of stuffed birds in her hair."
A melancholy outlook truly, though as an onlooker expressed it, the effect of the spreading wings was vastly more grotesque than beautiful. The poor little blackbirds! Their destruction goes on without abatement.