babies starve, but, Mr. Bok, I must have my
beautiful aigrette!"

Bok was frankly astounded: he had certainly probed deep this time into
the feminine nature. With every desire and instinct to disbelieve the
facts, the deeper his inquiries went, the stronger the evidence rolled
up: there was no gainsaying it; no sense in a further disbelief of it.

But Bok was determined that this time he would not fail. His sense of
justice and protection to the mother-bird and her young was now fully
aroused. He resolved that he would, by compulsion, bring about what he
had failed to do by persuasion. He would make it impossible for women to
be untrue to their most sacred instinct. He sought legal talent, had a
bill drawn up making it a misdemeanor to import, sell, purchase, or wear
an aigrette. Armed with this measure, and the photographs and articles
which he had published, he sought and obtained the interest and promise
of support of the most influential legislators in several States. He
felt a sense of pride in his own sex that he had no trouble in winning
the immediate interest of every legislator with whom he talked.

Where he had failed with women, he was succeeding with men! The
outrageous butchery of the birds and the circumstances under which they
were tortured appealed with direct force to the sporting instinct in
every man, and aroused him. Bok explained to each that he need expect no
support for such a measure from women save from the members of the
Audubon Societies, and a few humanitarian women and bird-lovers. Women,
as a whole, he argued from his experiences, while they would not go so
far as openly to oppose such a measure, for fear of public comment,
would do nothing to further its passage, for in their hearts they
preferred failure to success for the legislation. They had frankly told
him so: he was not speaking from theory.

In one State after another Bok got into touch with legislators. He
counselled, in each case, a quiet passage for the measure instead of one
that would draw public attention to it.

Meanwhile, a strong initiative had come from the Audubon Societies
throughout the country, and from the National Association of Audubon
Societies, at New York. This latter society also caused to be introduced
bills of its own to the same and in various legislatures, and here Bok
had a valuable ally. It was a curious fact that the Audubon officials
encountered their strongest resistance in Bok's own State: Pennsy