‘My friend, have you heard an extraordinary cock-crow of late?’
‘Well, well,’ he drawled, ‘I don’t know--the Widow Crowfoot has a
cock--and Squire Squaretoes has a cock--and I have a cock, and they all
crow. But I don’t know of any on ’em with ’strordinary crows.’
‘Good morning to you,’ said I, shortly; ‘it’s plain that you have not
heard the crow of the Emperor of China’s chanticleer.’
Presently I met another old man mending a tumble-down old rail-fence.
The rails were rotten, and at every move of the old man’s hand they
crumbled into yellow ochre. He had much better let the fence alone, or
else get him new rails. And here I must say, that one cause of the sad
fact why idiocy more prevails among farmers than any other class of
people, is owing to their undertaking the mending of rotten rail-fences
in warm, relaxing spring weather. The enterprise is a hopeless one. It
is a laborious one; it is a bootless one. It is an enterprise to make
the heart break. Vast pains squandered upon a vanity. For how can one
make rotten rail-fences stand up on their rotten pins? By what magic put
pith into sticks which have lain freezing and baking through sixty
consecutive winters and summers? This it is, this wretched endeavour to
mend rotten rail-fences with their own rotten rails, which drives many
farmers into the asylum.
On the face of the old man in question incipient idiocy was plainly
marked. For, about sixty rods before him extended one of the most
unhappy and desponding broken-hearted Virginia rail-fences I ever saw in
my life. While in a field behind, were a set of young steers, possessed
as by devils, continually butting at this forlorn old fence, and
breaking through it here and there, causing the old man to drop his work
and chase them back within bounds. He would chase them with a piece of
rail huge as Goliath’s beam, but as light as cork. At the first
flourish, it crumbled into powder.
‘My friend,’ said I, addressing this woeful mortal, ‘have you heard an
extraordinary cock-crow of late?’
I might as well have asked him if he had heard the death-tick. He stared
at me with a long, bewildered, doleful, and unutterable stare, and
without reply resumed his unhappy labours.
What a fool, thought I, to have asked such an uncheerful and uncheerable
creature about a cheerful cock!
I walked on. I had now descended the high land where my house stood, and
being in a low tract could not hear the crow of the Shanghai, which
doubtless overshot me there. Besides, the Shanghai might be at lunch of
corn and oats, or taking a nap, and so interrupted his jubilations for a
while.
At length I encountered riding along the road, a portly gentleman--nay,
a _pursy_ one--of great wealth, who had recently purchased him some
noble acres, and built him a noble mansion, with a goodly fowl-house
attached, the fame whereof spread through all that country. Thought I,
Here now is the owner of the Shanghai.
‘Sir,’ said I, ‘excuse me, but I am a countryman of yours, and would
ask, if so be you own any Shanghais?’
‘Oh, yes; I have ten Shanghais.’
‘Ten!’ exclaimed I in wonder; ‘and do they all crow?’
‘Most lustily; every soul of them; I wouldn’t own a cock that wouldn’t
crow.’
‘Will you turn back, and show me those Shanghais?’
‘With pleasure: I am proud of them. They cost me, in the lump, six
hundred dollars.’
As I walked by the side of his horse, I was thinking to myself whether
possibly I had not mistaken the harmoniously combined crowings of ten
Shanghais in a squad, for the supernatural crow of a single Shanghai by
himself.
‘Sir,’ said I, ‘is there one of your Shanghais which far exceeds all the
others in the lustiness, musicalness, and inspiring effects of his
crow?’
‘They crow pretty much alike, I believe,’ he courteously replied; ‘I
really don’t know that I could tell their crow apart.’
I began to think that after all my noble chanticleer might not be in the
possession of this wealthy gentleman. However, we went into his
fowl-yard, and I saw his Shanghais. Let me say that hitherto I had never
clapped eye on this species of imported fowl. I had heard what enormous
prices were paid for them, and also that they were of an enormous size,
and had somehow fancied they must be of a beauty and brilliancy
proportioned both to size and price. What was my surprise, then, to see
ten carrot-coloured monsters, without the smallest pretension to
effulgence of plumage. Immediately I determined that my royal cock was
neither among these, nor could possibly be a Shanghai at all; if these
gigantic gallows-bird fowl were fair specimens of the true Shanghai.
I walked all day, dining and resting at a farm-house, inspecting various
fowl-yards, interrogating various owners of fowls, hearkening to various
crows, but discovered not the mysterious chanticleer. Indeed, I had
wandered so far and deviously, that I could not hear his crow. I began
to suspect that this cock was a mere visitor in the country, who had
taken his departure by the eleven o’clock train from the south, and was
now crowing and jubilating somewhere on the verdant banks of Long Island
Sound.
But next morning, again I heard the inspiring blast, again felt my blood
bound in me, again felt superior to all the ills of life, again felt
like turning my dun out of doors. But displeased with the reception
given him at his last visit, the dun stayed away, doubtless being in a
huff. Silly fellow that he was, to take a harmless joke in earnest.
Several days passed, during which I made sundry excursions in the
regions round about, but in vain sought the cock. Still, I heard him
from the hill, and sometimes from the house, and sometimes in the
stillness of the night. If at times I would relapse into my doleful
dumps, straightway at the sound of the exultant and defiant crow, my
soul, too, would turn chanticleer, and clap her wings, and throw back
her throat, and breathe forth a cheerful challenge to all the world of
woes.
At last, after some weeks I was necessitated to clap another mortgage on
my estate in order to pay certain debts, and among others the one I owed
the dun, who of late had commenced a civil-process against me. The way
the process was served was a most insulting one. In a private room I had
been enjoying myself in the village tavern over a bottle of Philadelphia
porter, and some Herkimer cheese, and a roll, and having apprised the
landlord, who was a friend of mine, that I would settle with him when I
received my next remittances, stepped to the peg where I had hung my hat
in the bar-room, to get a choice cigar I had left in the hall, when lo!
I found the civil-process enveloping the cigar. When I unrolled the
cigar, I unrolled the civil-process, and the constable standing by
rolled out, with a thick tongue, ‘Take notice!’ and added, in a whisper,
‘Put that in your pipe and smoke it!’
I turned short round upon the gentlemen then and there present in that
bar-room. Said I, ‘Gentlemen, is this an honourable--nay, is this a
lawful way of serving a civil-process? Behold!’
One and all they were of opinion that it was a highly inelegant act in
the constable to take advantage of a gentleman’s lunching on cheese and
porter, to be so uncivil as to slip a civil-process into his hat. It was
ungenerous; it was cruel; for the sudden shock of the thing coming
instanter upon the lunch would impair the proper digestion of the
cheese, which is proverbially not so easy of digestion as blanc-mange.
Arrived home, I read the process, and felt a twinge of melancholy.
Hard world! hard world! Here I am, as good a fellow as ever
lived--hospitable--open-hearted--generous to a fault: and the Fates
forbid that I should possess the fortune to bless the country
with my bounteousness. Nay, while many a stingy curmudgeon rolls in
idle gold, I, heart of nobleness as I am, I have civil-processes
served on me! I bowed my head, and felt forlorn--unjustly
used--abused--unappreciated--in short, miserable.
Hark! like a clarion! yea, like a jolly bolt of thunder with bells to
it--came the all-glorious and defiant crow! Ye gods, how it set me up
again! Right on my pins! Yea, verily on stilts!
Oh, noble cock!
Plain as cock could speak, it said: ‘Let the world and all aboard of it
go to pot. Do you be jolly, and never say die. What’s the world compared
to you? What is it anyhow but a lump of loam? Do you be jolly!’
Oh, noble cock!
‘But my dear and glorious cock,’ mused I, upon second thought, ‘one
can’t so easily send this world to pot; one can’t so easily be jolly
with civil-processes in his hat or hand.’
Hark! the crow again. Plain as cock could speak, it said: ‘Hang the
process, and hang the fellow that sent it! If you have not land or cash,
go and thrash the fellow, and tell him you never mean to pay him. Be
jolly!’
Now this was the way--through the imperative intimations of the
cock--that I came to clap the added mortgage on my estate; paid all my
debts by fusing them into this one added bond and mortgage. Thus made at
ease again, I renewed my search for the noble cock. But in vain, though
I heard him every day. I began to think there was some sort of deception
in this mysterious thing: some wonderful ventriloquist prowled around my
barns, or in my cellar, or on my roof, and was minded to be gaily
mischievous. But no--what ventriloquist could so crow with such an
heroic and celestial crow?
At last, one morning there came to me a certain singular man, who had
sawed and split my wood in March--some five-and-thirty cords of it--and
now he came for his pay. He was a singular man, I say. He was tall and
spare, with a long, saddish face, yet somehow a latently joyous eye,
which offered the strangest contrast. His air seemed staid, but
undepressed. He wore a long, gray, shabby coat, and a big battered hat.
This man had sawed my wood at so much a cord. He would stand and saw all
day long in a driving snowstorm, and never wink at it. He never spoke
unless spoken to. He only sawed. Saw, saw, saw--snow, snow, snow. The
saw and the snow went together like two natural things. The first day
this man came, he brought his dinner with him, and volunteered to eat it
sitting on his buck in the snowstorm. From my window, where I was
reading Burton’s _Anatomy of Melancholy_, I saw him in the act. I burst
out of doors bare-headed. ‘Good heavens!’ cried I; ‘what are you doing?
Come in. _This_ your dinner!’
He had a hunk of stale bread and another hunk of salt beef, wrapped in a
wet newspaper, and washed his morsels down by melting a handful of fresh
snow in his mouth. I took this rash man indoors, planted him by the
fire, gave him a dish of hot pork and beans, and a mug of cider.
‘Now,’ said I, ‘don’t you bring any of your damp dinners here. You work
by the job, to be sure, but I’ll dine you for all that.’
He expressed his acknowledgments in a calm, proud, but not ungrateful
way, and dispatched his meal with satisfaction to himself, and me also.
It afforded me pleasure to perceive that he quaffed down his mug of
cider like a man. I honoured him. When I addressed him in the way of
business at his buck, I did so in a guardedly respectful and deferential
manner. Interested in his singular aspect, struck by his wondrous
intensity of application at his saw--a most wearisome and disgustful
occupation to most people--I often sought to gather from him who he was,
what sort of a life he led, where he was born, and so on. But he was
mum. He came to saw my wood, and eat my dinners--if I chose to offer
them--but not to gabble. At first I somewhat resented his sullen silence
under the circumstances. But better considering it, I honoured him the
more. I increased the respectfulness and deferentialness of my address
toward him. I concluded within myself that this man had experienced hard
times; that he had had many sore rubs in the world; that he was of a
solemn disposition; that he was of the mind of Solomon; that he lived
calmly, decorously, temperately; and though a very poor man, was,
nevertheless, a highly respectable one. At times I imagined that he
might even be an elder or deacon of some small country church. I thought
it would not be a bad plan to run this excellent man for President of
the United States. He would prove a great reformer of abuses.
His name was Merrymusk. I had often thought how jolly a name for so
unjolly a wight. I inquired of people whether they knew Merrymusk. But
it was some time before I learned much about him. He was by birth a
Marylander, it appeared, who had long lived in the country round about;
a wandering man; until within some ten years ago, a thriftless man,
though perfectly innocent of crime; a man who would work hard a month
with surprising soberness, and then spend all his wages in one riotous
night. In youth he had been a sailor, and run away from his ship at
Batavia, where he caught the fever, and came nigh dying. But he rallied,
reshipped, landed home, found all his friends dead, and struck for the
Northern interior, where he had since tarried. Nine years back he had
married a wife, and now had four children. His wife was become a perfect
invalid; one child had the white-swelling, and the rest were rickety. He
and his family lived in a shanty on a lonely barren patch nigh the
railroad-track, where it passed close to the base of a mountain. He had
bought a fine cow to have plenty of wholesome milk for his children; but
the cow died during an accouchement, and he could not afford to buy
another. Still, his family never suffered for lack of food. He worked
hard and brought it to them.
Now, as I said before, having long previously sawed my wood, this
Merrymusk came for his pay.
‘My friend,’ said I, ‘do you know of any gentleman hereabouts who owns
an extraordinary cock?’
The twinkle glittered quite plain in the wood-sawyer’s eye.
‘I know of no _gentleman_,’ he replied, ‘who has what might well be
called an extraordinary cock.’
Oh, thought I, this Merrymusk is not the man to enlighten me. I am
afraid I shall never discover this extraordinary cock.
Not having the full change to pay Merrymusk, I gave him his due, as nigh
as I could make it, and told him that in a day or two I would take a
walk and visit his place, and hand him the remainder. Accordingly one
fine morning I sallied forth upon the errand. I had much ado finding the
best road to the shanty. No one seemed to know where it was exactly. It
lay in a very lonely part of the country, a densely-wooded mountain on
one side (which I call October Mountain, on account of its bannered
aspect in that month), and a thicketed swamp on the other, the railroad
cutting the swamp. Straight as a die the railroad cut it; many times a
day tantalising the wretched shanty with the sight of all the beauty,
rank, fashion, health, trunks, silver and gold, dry-goods and groceries,
brides and grooms, happy wives and husbands, flying by the lonely
door--no time to stop--flash! here they are--and there they go!--out of
sight at both ends--as if that part of the world were only made to fly
over, and not to settle upon. And this was about all the shanty saw of
what people call ‘life.’
Though puzzled somewhat, yet I knew the general direction where the
shanty lay, and on I trudged. As I advanced, I was surprised to hear the
mysterious cock crow with more and more distinctness. Is it possible,
thought I, that any gentleman owning a Shanghai can dwell in such a
lonesome, dreary region? Louder and louder, nigher and nigher, sounded
the glorious and defiant clarion. Though somehow I may be out of the
track to my wood-sawyer’s, I said to myself, yet, thank Heaven, I seem
to be on the way toward that extraordinary cock. I was delighted with
this auspicious accident. On I journeyed; while at intervals the crow
sounded most invitingly, and jocundly, and superbly; and the last crow
was ever nigher than the former one. At last, emerging from a thicket of
elders, straight before me I saw the most resplendent creature that ever
blessed the sight of man.
A cock, more like a golden eagle than a cock. A cock, more like a
field-marshal than a cock. A cock, more like Lord Nelson with all his
glittering arms on, standing on the _Vanguard’s_ quarter-deck going into
battle, than a cock. A cock, more like the Emperor Charlemagne in his
robes at Aix-la-Chapelle, than a cock.
Such a cock!
He was of a haughty size, stood haughtily on his haughty legs. His
colours were red, gold, and white. The red was on his crest alone, which
was a mighty and symmetric crest, like unto Hector’s helmet, as
delineated on antique shields. His plumage was snowy, traced with gold.
He walked in front of the shanty, like a peer of the realm; his crest
lifted, his chest heaved out, his embroidered trappings flashing in the
light. His pace was wonderful. He looked like some noble foreigner. He
looked like some Oriental king in some magnificent Italian opera.
Merrymusk advanced from the door.
‘Pray, is not that the Signor Beneventano?’
‘Sir!’
‘That’s the cock,’ said I, a little embarrassed. The truth was, my
enthusiasm had betrayed me into a rather silly inadvertence. I had made
a somewhat learned sort of allusion in the presence of an unlearned man.
Consequently, upon discovering it by his honest stare, I felt foolish;
but carried it off by declaring that _this was the cock_.
Now, during the preceding autumn I had been to the city, and had chanced
to be present at a performance of the Italian Opera. In that opera
figured in some royal character a certain Signor Beneventano--a man of a
tall, imposing person, clad in rich raiment, like to plumage, and with a
most remarkable, majestic, scornful stride. The Signor Beneventano
seemed on the point of tumbling over backward with exceeding
haughtiness. And, for all the world, the proud pace of the cock seemed
the very stage-pace of the Signor Beneventano.
Hark! Suddenly the cock paused, lifted his head still higher, ruffled
his plumes, seemed inspired, and sent forth a lusty crow. October
Mountain echoed it; other mountains sent it back; still others rebounded
it; it overran the country round. Now I plainly perceived how it was I
had chanced to hear the gladdening sound on my distant hill.
‘Good heavens! do you own the cock? Is that cock yours?’
‘Is it my cock!’ said Merrymusk, looking slyly gleeful out of the corner
of his long, solemn face.
‘Where did you get it?’
‘It chipped the shell here. I raised it.’
‘You?’
Hark! Another crow. It might have raised the ghosts of all the pines and
hemlocks ever cut down in that country. Marvellous cock! Having crowed,
he strode on again, surrounded by a bevy of admiring hens.
‘What will you take for Signor Beneventano?’
‘Sir?’
‘That magic cock!--what will you take for him?’
‘I won’t sell him.’
‘I will give you fifty dollars.’
‘Pooh!’
‘One hundred!’
‘Pish!’
‘Five hundred!’
‘Bah!’
‘And you a poor man?’
‘No; don’t I own that cock, and haven’t I refused five hundred dollars
for him?’
‘True,’ said I, in profound thought; ‘that’s a fact. You won’t sell him,
then?’
‘No.’
‘Will you give him?’
‘No.’
‘Will you _keep_ him, then!’ I shouted, in a rage.
‘Yes.’
I stood a while admiring the cock, and wondering at the man. At last I
felt a redoubled admiration of the one, and a redoubled deference for
the other.
‘Won’t you step in?’ said Merrymusk.
‘But won’t the cock be prevailed upon to join us?’ said I.
‘Yes. Trumpet! hither, boy! hither!’
The cock turned round, and strode up to Merrymusk.
‘Come!’
The cock followed us into the shanty.
‘Crow!’
The roof jarred.
Oh, noble cock!
I turned in silence upon my entertainer. There he sat on an old battered
chest, in his old tattered gray coat, with patches at his knees and
elbows, and a deplorably bunged hat. I glanced round the room. Bare
rafters overhead, but solid junks of jerked beef hanging from them.
Earth floor, but a heap of potatoes in one corner, and a sack of Indian
meal in another. A blanket was strung across the apartment at the
farther end, from which came a woman’s ailing voice and the voices of
ailing children. But somehow in the ailing of these voices there seemed
no complaint.
‘Mrs. Merrymusk and children?’
‘Yes.’
I looked at the cock. There he stood majestically in the middle of the
room. He looked like a Spanish grandee caught in a shower, and standing
under some peasant’s shed. There was a strange supernatural look of
contrast about him. He irradiated the shanty; he glorified its meanness.
He glorified the battered chest, and tattered gray coat, and the bunged
hat. He glorified the very voices which came in ailing tones from behind
the screen.
‘Oh, father,’ cried a little sickly voice, ‘let Trumpet sound again.’
‘Crow,’ cried Merrymusk.
The cock threw himself into a posture.
The roof jarred.
‘Does not this disturb Mrs. Merrymusk and the sick children?’
‘Crow again, Trumpet.’
The roof jarred.
‘It does not disturb them, then?’
‘Didn’t you hear ’em _ask_ for it?’
‘How is it, that your sick family like this crowing?’ said I. ‘The cock
is a glorious cock, with a glorious voice, but not exactly the sort of
thing for a sick-chamber, one would suppose. Do they really like it?’
‘Don’t _you_ like it? Don’t it do _you_ good? Ain’t it inspiring? Don’t
it impart pluck? give stuff against despair?’
‘All true,’ said I, removing my hat with profound humility before the
brave spirit disguised in the base coat.
‘But then,’ said I, still with some misgivings, ‘so loud, so wonderfully
clamorous a crow, methinks might be amiss to invalids, and retard their
convalescence.’
‘Crow your best now, Trumpet!’
I leaped from my chair. The cock frightened me, like some overpowering
angel in the Apocalypse. He seemed crowing over the fall of wicked
Babylon, or crowing over the triumph of righteous Joshua in the vale of
Askalon. When I regained my composure somewhat, an inquisitive thought
occurred to me. I resolved to gratify it.
‘Merrymusk, will you present me to your wife and children?’
‘Yes. Wife, the gentleman wants to step in.’
‘He is very welcome,’ replied a weak voice.
Going behind the curtain, there lay a wasted, but strangely cheerful
human face; and that was pretty much all; the body, hid by the
counterpane and an old coat, seemed too shrunken to reveal itself
through such impediments. At the bedside sat a pale girl, ministering.
In another bed lay three children, side by side: three more pale faces.
‘Oh, father, we don’t mislike the gentleman, but let us see Trumpet
too.’
At a word, the cock strode behind the screen, and perched himself on the
children’s bed. All their wasted eyes gazed at him with a wild and
spiritual delight. They seemed to sun themselves in the radiant plumage
of the cock.
‘Better than a ’pothecary, eh?’ said Merrymusk. ‘This is Dr. Cock
himself.’
We retired from the sick ones, and I reseated myself again, lost in
thought over this strange household.
‘You seem a glorious independent fellow!’ said I.
‘And I don’t think you a fool, and never did. Sir, you are a trump.’
‘Is there any hope of your wife’s recovery?’ said I, modestly seeking to
turn the conversation.
‘Not the least.’
‘The children?’
‘Very little.’
‘It must be a doleful life, then, for all concerned. This lonely
solitude--this shanty--hard work--hard times.’
‘Haven’t I Trumpet? He’s the cheerer. He crows through all; crows at the
darkest: Glory to God in the highest! Continually he crows it.’
‘Just the import I first ascribed to his crow, Merrymusk, when first I
heard it from my hill. I thought some rich nabob owned some costly
Shanghai; little weening any such poor man as you owned this lusty cock
of a domestic breed.’
‘_Poor_ man like _me_? Why call _me_ poor? Don’t the cock _I_ own
glorify this otherwise inglorious, lean, lantern-jawed land? Didn’t _my_
cock encourage _you_? And _I_ give you all this glorification away
gratis. I am a great philanthropist. I am a rich man--a very rich man,
and a very happy one. Crow, Trumpet.’
The roof jarred.
I returned home in a deep mood. I was not wholly at rest concerning the
soundness of Merrymusk’s views of things, though full of admiration for
him. I was thinking on the matter before my door, when I heard the cock
crow again. Enough. Merrymusk is right.
Oh, noble cock! oh, noble man!
I did not see Merrymusk for some weeks after this; but hearing the
glorious and rejoicing crow, I supposed that all went as usual with him.
My own frame of mind remained a rejoicing one. The cock still inspired
me. I saw another mortgage piled on my plantation; but only bought
another dozen of stout, and a dozen-dozen of Philadelphia porter. Some
of my relatives died; I wore no mourning, but for three days drank stout
in preference to porter, stout being of the darker colour. I heard the
cock crow the instant I received the unwelcome tidings.
‘Your health in this stout, oh, noble cock!’
I thought I would call on Merrymusk again, not having seen or heard of
him for some time now. Approaching the place, there were no signs of
motion about the shanty. I felt a strange misgiving. But the cock crew
from within doors, and the boding vanished. I knocked at the door. A
feeble voice bade me enter. The curtain was no longer drawn; the whole
house was a hospital now. Merrymusk lay on a heap of old clothes; wife
and children were all in their beds. The cock was perched on an old
hogshead hoop, swung from the ridge-pole in the middle of the shanty.
‘You are sick, Merrymusk,’ said I, mournfully.
‘No, I am well,’ he feebly answered. ‘Crow, Trumpet.’