ready and able to protect the dumb creatures that are given us for
blessings, not for victims.

While I am writing this, picture after picture comes up from my own past
girlhood, and my heart stands still as I remember how ferocious a thirst
for fun and ignorance can be in a child. How many sleepy-looking toads I
have seen, with their backs all jewels, and their throats yellow gold,
that asked nothing but a burdock leaf for shelter, and a few flies for
food, crushed to death by boys who thought no harm, and only liked the
sport of killing something.

Since then, I have learned that these little creatures are a great help
to gardeners, and that wise men foster them with kindness and care.

Once, down by the trout-brook we know of, I saw a lot of children, busy
as bees, doing something on the bank, where two or three boys were
kneeling, and the rest looking on. Of course I went down to the brook,
and, being a little mite of a creature, looked on, half frightened, half
wondering.

The boys had caught a great frog, green as grass. He was, I have no
doubt, one of those hoarse old croakers, that make one timid about going
by ponds and marshy ground in the night, up in our State. Well, they had
him down in the grass, and one held him while the other ran a pin
through both jaws and twisted it there. There was no fun in this. A lot
of doctors cutting off an arm couldn't have been more gravely in
earnest. Some of the boys were eight and ten years old; but not one of
them seemed to feel that they were doing a hideous thing. I remember
feeling very sorry for the poor frog, but it was not till years and
years after that I understood the horrible, lingering death these
ignorant boys had tortured him with. Since then I have never thought of
that sparkling trout stream, without a pain at my heart.

"Childish ignorance," I hear you say--for some of these boys were your
own brothers, and meant no harm. But what right had they to be ignorant?
They knew well enough that it was against the law to kill one another.
Why were they not taught that the life that God gives to His meanest
creature is as sacred as a good man's prayers; unless necessity calls
for it, and then it must be taken with as little suffering as death can
give?

Sisters, I am in earnest; the missionary spirit is strong upon me. I
wish our Society to take up this subject with interest. What Mr. Bergh
has been doing among men, we must do among the children of this
gene