Dickey Downy: The Autobiography of a Bird

by Virginia Sharpe Patterson

When at last my covering was removed I found myself in a large, long room, which I afterward learned was a millinery store. In fact the store was the front part of the family residence, the living rooms being behind and upstairs over it. My cage was hung near the wide doorway at the end of the apartment and my new mistress at once ran to fill my cup with fresh water and bring me a supply of clean millet. After I had refreshed myself I began to look about me and study my strange surroundings.

My new home was so unlike the little log house in the South from which I had come that it was many days before I could accustom myself to the clatter of voices which buzzed monotonously all day through the store. From ten o'clock in the morning, if the day were fine, till three in the afternoon, the din at times was almost deafening; for it was the busy season and customers were constantly coming and going, not all of them to buy, merely to look over the ribbons and tumble up the goods, as I heard the tired clerks say complainingly more than once.

Numerous glass cases were placed near the walls, and running cross-wise were a counter and shelves much frequented by ladies who stood eagerly examining the array of bright gauzes, the glittering buckles, the flowers and plumes displayed there. And what a chattering they kept up! What a stir and a hubbub they made! So many "Oh-h's" and "Ah-h's," so many "How lovely's," and other ecstatic exclamations, were mingled with their conversation as was quite bewildering. In time, however, I became accustomed to this and discovered it was simply a way ladies have of expressing their approval of things in general. Around the glass cases which held the trimmed hats the women buzzed like a swarm of flies, their volubility assuming a more emphatic character as they gazed within at the fashionable headgear placed on long steel wires. Almost every hat held one, or a part of one, of my slaughtered race. Frequently there were parts of two or three varieties on one hat—a tail of one kind, a wing of another, or a head of a different species. The ends of the world had been searched to make this patchwork of blood. The women raved over the cruel display; they gloated over our beauty; but they cared nothing for the pathetic story the hats told of rifled nests and motherless young.

My new owner was a soft-voiced, gentle child, from whom I soon found I had nothing to fear. She was most careful to keep my cage in order and never neglected to feed me. Unlike her little friend Betty, she never allowed her sports or pleasures to interfere with this duty. Often her playmates came for a romp in the garden behind the store, but she did not join them till she had first attended to my wants. I was fond of having her talk to me, for her voice was sweet and kind, and the little terms of endearment she often used were very pleasing and made me feel she was my true friend. She once tried to pet me by stroking my feathers, but I did not like it. Although I knew she did not mean to hurt me, the motion of her hand made me nervous. Instead of persisting, she only said reproachfully, as she put me back on my perch:

"Dear Dickey Downy, why are you afraid of me? Your own little Polly wouldn't hurt you for the world. I wanted to softly stroke your pretty plumage just out of pure love and, you dear little coward, you won't let me."

In her affection for me, Polly did not forget the wild birds outside, which flew about in the big evergreen trees near the garden gate. She showed her thoughtfulness for the little creatures by strewing bread crumbs for them on the window sills on snowy days. She often gathered up the tablecloth after the housemaid had removed the breakfast dishes and, running out under the trees, would shake it vigorously that her wild pets might get all the little pieces of food that fell. Not a bird came down as long as she remained in the yard, but as soon as she had tripped back to the house and the door closed upon her brown curls, I could see a drove of hungry snowbirds swoop from the trees, and in a minute every crumb would be picked up. I am sure they must have loved dear little Polly, for many a choice bit did they get through her kindness.

While the majority of the customers at the store were well-dressed women, there were many who came to buy hats who looked poor and pinched. A few looked slatternly.

A sudden swing of their dress skirts would disclose a badly frayed petticoat or a tattered stocking showing above the shabby shoe. Their gloveless hands were red and cold and coarse, and the milliner told the clerk that she dreaded to have them handle her filmy laces or glistening satins, because their rough fingers stuck to the delicate fabrics and injured them.

These poor women worked hard, early and late. Beyond the barest necessities they had little to spare, and yet not a woman among them would have bought an unfashionable or out-of-date hat could she have had it at one quarter the price. Feathers were fashionable, and feathers she must have. Might not one "as well be out of the world as out of the fashion"?

All this dreadful traffic in my murdered comrades, and their display in the glass cases as well as on the heads of the customers, naturally made me very sad, and I now looked with aversion at every woman who entered the store. But that all were not heartless fiends who were robed in feminine garb I found out another day when a daintily dressed lady came in to purchase a winter hat. The contents of the glass cases were looked over critically for some time before she selected one which she tried on before the long mirror. The milliner, who deftly adjusted it for her, tipping it first forward a little, then setting it back a trifle, stood off now to view the effect, at the same time assuring her how beautiful it was, and how vastly becoming to her.