Her Pets by Charlotte Perkins Gilman

Pacific Press Publishing Association · Mountain View, California · Apr 9, 1912

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 39, No. 15.

Her Pets

By Charlotte Perkins Gilman

SHE saw the pleasant living creatures,— bright birds scattering music in the air, fish like darting lights in the dark water, beasts with soft eyes and softer fur. There- fore to her house she brought them, in chains and cages and glaring jails of glass she kept them, prisoners and exiles all.

Out of the billowing green boughs of the forest, the endless oceans of bright air, the refreshing rain, the winds that lift and rush and fill with wild rejoicing; out of the whispering darkness of deep leaves, the wide, sweet light of sunlit hill and valley; away from pleasant chase of food desired,— come the yellow song-birds which she loves; come over land and sea in small, tight wicker cells; come to prisons of gilded wires scarce larger; come to the smothering house air, the dull, constant, dreary walls, the sick heat, the smell of coal-gas and the smoke of oil; to such stale, monotonous food as falls to them inert; to hop and hop and hop, to sing madly to no end, and dream of flight,—to this come the birds she loves.— Charlotte Perkins Gilman.