nearthed the
origin of the fashionable aigrette, the most desired of all the
feathered possessions of womankind. He had been told of the cruel
torture of the mother-heron, who produced the beautiful aigrette only in
her period of maternity and who was cruelly slaughtered, usually left to
die slowly rather than killed, leaving her whole nest of baby-birds to
starve while they awaited the return of the mother-bird.

Bok was shown the most heart-rending photographs portraying the butchery
of the mother and the starvation of her little ones. He collected all
the photographs that he could secure, had the most graphic text written
to them, and began their publication. He felt certain that the mere
publication of the frightfully convincing photographs would be enough to
arouse the mother-instinct in every woman and stop the wearing of the
so-highly prized feather. But for the second time in his attempt to
reform the feminine nature he reckoned beside the mark.

He published a succession of pages showing the frightful cost at which
the aigrette was secured. There was no challenging the actual facts as
shown by the photographic lens: the slaughter of the mother-bird, and
the starving baby-birds; and the importers of the feather wisely
remained quiet, not attempting to answer Bok's accusations. Letters
poured in upon the editor from Audubon Society workers; from lovers of
birds, and from women filled with the humanitarian instinct. But Bok
knew that the answer was not with those few: the solution lay with the
larger circle of American womanhood from which he did not hear.

He waited for results. They came. But they were not those for which he
had striven. After four months of his campaign, he learned from the
inside of the importing-houses which dealt in the largest stocks of
aigrettes in the United States that the demand for the feather had more
than quadrupled! Bok was dumbfounded! He made inquiries in certain
channels from which he knew he could secure the most reliable
information, and after all the importers had been interviewed, the
conviction was unescapable that just in proportion as Bok had dwelt upon
the desirability of the aigrette as the hallmark of wealth and fashion,
upon its expense, and the fact that women regarded it as the last word
in feminine adornment, he had by so much made these facts familiar to
thousands of women who had never before known of them, and had created
the desire to own one of the precious f