MURDEROUS MILLINERY

Pacific Press Publishing Company · Oakland, California · Aug 9, 1899

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 25, No. 32.

MURDEROUS MILLINERY.

A LADY told me, the other day, a painful little incident relating to wearing birds on your bonnets and hats. I will try to give her own words. She said:—

"One day our pastor said (during service) that when he was in Florence a lady came to him and said: 'Do come with me and hear those birds sing, O, such mournful notes!' There was a room full of birds in very small cages, and these birds were all blind; they had had their eyes put out. In the night the owners take them outside the city and hang the cages in trees. The trees are then all smeared with tar. These birds keep up their pitiful singing, and other birds are attracted to the cage, and they get stuck on the tar, and then they are caught and their eyes are put out. And these birds are killed and sent to America for ladies to wear on their bonnets."

"And I looked around the congregation to see what ladies had birds on their bonnets, and I was glad there was none on mine; and I don't think I can ever wear a bird again."