is neck, just to read about it.... I had seen this
thing before--yet never as this time. Queer how these things happen! A
man must see a thing like that just right, in full meaning, and then
tell it again and again--until enough others see, to make it dangerous
to ship that way. I got the idea then, 'Suppose a man would make it his
life-work to change those crates--to make those crates such a stench and
abomination, that poultry butchers would not dare use them. What a
worthy life work that would be!...' And then I thought, 'Why leave it
for the other fellow?...' The personal relation is everything," he
concluded.

There was something round and equable about this man's talk, and about
his creeds. He was "out for the chickens," as he expressed it. This task
came to him and he refused to dodge. Perhaps he will be the last to see
the big thing that he is doing, for he is in the ruck of it. And then
very often a man sets out to find a passage to India and gets a New
World. In any case, to put four inches on the chicken-crates of America
is very much a man's job, when one considers the relation of tariff to
bulk in freight and express.

Yet there is _efficiency_ even to that added expenditure--a very
thrilling one, if the public would just stop once and think. If you have
ever felt the heat of anger rising in your breast, given way to it, and
suffered the lassitude and self-hatred of reaction, it will be easy for
you to believe the demonstrable truth that anger is a poison. Fear is
another; and the breaking down of tissue as a result of continued
torture is caused by still another poison. The point is that we consume
these poisons. The government is very active in preventing certain
diseased meats from reaching our tables, but these of fear, rage,
blood-madness and last-days-of-agony are subtler diseases which have so
far had little elucidation.

Though this is not a plea for vegetarianism, one should not be allowed
to forget too long the tens of thousands of men and boys who are engaged
in slaughtering--nor the slaughtered.... Long ago there was a story of
an opera cloak for which fifty birds of paradise gave their life and
bloom. It went around the world, that story, and there is much beauty in
the wild to-day because of it. The trade in plumes has suffered. Styles
change--but there is much Persian lamb still worn. Perhaps in good time
the Messiah of the lambs will come forth, as the half-frozen chickens
found theirs in