Fuss and Feathers [from The Temple Bar] In this excerpt from “The Temple Bar,” the author uses images of birds to introduce a meditation on what makes a person valuable and important to humanity.  The author touches on the value of truth versus artifice in aspects of religion, politics, and people’s everyday lives.  To the author, “fuss and feathers” encompasses “almost all of our amusements, many of our pleasures, and much of our business” as well as “all that is exaggerated, unfounded, unpractical, and untruthful” (2).