m that as soon as they
took their fish out of the water, they would kill them by a sharp blow
on the back of the head. They were all the more ready to do this, when
he told them that their fish would taste better when cooked, if they had
been killed as soon as they were taken from the water into the air.

A little girl had gotten her mother to say that she would never again
put lobsters into cold water and slowly boil them to death. She had also
stopped a man in the street who was carrying a pair of fowls with their
heads down, and asked him if he would kindly reverse their position.
The man told her that the fowls didn't mind, and she pursed up her
small mouth and showed the band how she said to him, "I would prefer
the opinion of the hens." Then she said he had laughed at her, and said,
"Certainly, little lady," and had gone off carrying them as she wanted
him to. She had also reasoned with different boys outside the village
who were throwing stones at birds and frogs, and sticking butterflies,
and had invited them to come to the Band of Mercy.

This child seemed to have done more than any one else for dumb animals.
She had taken around a petition to the village boys, asking them not to
search for birds' eggs, and she had even gone into her father's stable,
and asked him to hold her up, so that she could look into the horses'
mouths to see if their teeth wanted filing or were decayed. When her
father laughed at her, she told him that horses often suffer terrible
pain from their teeth, and that sometimes a runaway is caused by a metal
bit striking against the exposed nerve in the tooth of a horse that has
become almost frantic with pain.

She was a very gentle girl, and I think by the way that she spoke that
her father loved her dearly, for she told how much trouble he had taken
to make some tiny houses for her that she wanted for the wrens that came
about their farm, She told him that those little birds are so good at
catching insects that they ought to give all their time to it, and not
have any worry about making houses. Her father made their homes very
small, so that the English sparrows could not get in and crowd them out.

A boy said that he had gotten a pot of paint, and painted in large
letters on the fences around his father's farm: "Spare the toads, don't
kill the birds. Every bird killed is a loss to the country."

"That reminds me," said the president, "to ask the girls what they have
done about the mil