THE DEPARTED ROOSTER--THE GROCERY MAN DISCOURSES ON DEATH--
THE DEAD ROOSTER--A BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH--THE TENDERNESS
BETWEEN THE ROOSTER AND HIS FAITHFUL HEN--THE HEN RETIRES TO
SET--THE CHICKENS!--THE PROUD ROOSTER DIES--THE FICKLE HEN
FLIRTING IN INDECENT HASTE.
“Why don't you take an ice pick and clean the dirt out from under your
finger nails?” said the grocery man to the bad boy, as he came in the
store and stroked the cat the wrong way as she lay in the sun on the
counter, on a quire of manilla paper.
“Can't remove the dirt for thirty days--it is an emblem of mourning. Had
a funeral at our house, yesterday;” and the boy took a pickle out of a
tub and put it in the cat's mouth, and shut her teeth together on it,
and then went to the show case, while the grocery man whose back had
been turned during the pickle exercise, thought by the way the cat
jumped into the dried apple barrel, and began to paw and scratch with
all four of her feet, and yowl, that she was going to have a fit.
“I hadn't heard about it,” said the grocery man, as he took the cat by
the neck and tossed her out in the back shed into an old oyster box full
of sawdust, with a parting injunction that if she was going to have fits
she better go out where there was plenty of fresh air. “Death is always
a sad thing to contemplate. One day we are full of health, and joy, and
cold victuals, and the next we are screwed down in a box, a few words
are said over our remains, a few tears are shed, and there is a race to
see who shall get back from the cemetery first; and though we may think
we are an important factor in the world's progress, and sometimes feel
as though it would be unable to put up margins and have to stop the
deal, the world goes right along, and it must annoy people who die to
realize that they don't count for game. The greatest man in the world is
only a nine spot when he is dead, because somebody else takes the tricks
the dead man ought to have taken. But, say, who is dead at your house?”
“Our rooster! Take care, don't you hit me with that canvassed ham!” said
the boy as the grocery man looked mad to learn that there was nobody
dead but a rooster, when he had preached such a sermon on the subject.
“Yes, how soon we are forgotten when we are gone. Now, you would have
thought that rooster's hen would have remained faithful to him for a
week at least. I have watched them all the spring, and I never saw a
more perfect picture of devotion than that between the bantam rooster
and his hen. They were constantly together, and there was nothing too
good for her. He would dig up angle worms and call her, and when she
came up on a gallop and saw the great big worm on the ground, she would
look so proud of her rooster, and he would straighten up and look as
though he was saying to her, 'I'm a daisy,' and then she would look at
him as if she would like to bite him, and just as she was going to pick
up the worm he would snatch it and swallow it himself, and chuckle and
walk around and be full of business, as though wondering why she didn't
take the worm after he had dug it for her, and then the hen would look
disappointed at first and then she would look resigned, as much as to
say, 'Worms are too rich for my blood anyway, and the poor dear rooster
needs them more than I do, because he has to do all the crowing,' and
she would go off and find a grasshopper and eat it on the sly for fear
he would see her and complain because she didn't divide. O, I have never
seen anything that seemed to me so human as the relations between that
rooster and hen. He seemed to try to do everything for her. He would
make her stop cackling when she laid an egg, and he would try to cackle,
and crow over it as though he had laid it, and she would get off in a
corner and cluck in a modest, retiring manner, as though she wished to
convey the idea to the servant girls in the kitchen that the rooster had
to do all the hard work, and she was only a useless appendage, fit only
for society and company for him. But I was disgusted with him when the
poor hen was setting. The first week that she sat on the eggs he seemed
to get along first rate, because he had a couple of flower beds to dig
up, which a press of business had caused him to neglect before, and a
couple of neighbors' gardens to destroy, so he seemed to be glad to have
his hen retire to her boudoir and set, but after he had been shooed out
of the gardens and flower beds he seemed to be nervous, and evidently
wanted to be petted, and he would go near the hen and she would seem to
tell him to go and take a walk around the block, because she hadn't time
to leave her business, and if she didn't attend to it they would have a
lot of spoiled eggs on their hand, and no family to bring up. He would
scold, and seem to tell her that it was all foolishness, that for his
part he didn't want to hear a lot of chickens squawking around. He
would seem to argue with her that a brood of chickens would be a dead
give-away on them both, and they would be at once classed as old folks,
while if they were alone in the world they would be spring chickens, and
could go in young society, but the hen would scold back, and tell him
he ought to be ashamed of himself to talk that way, and he would go off
mad, and sulk around a spell, and then go to a neighbor's hen-house
and sometimes he wouldn't come back till the next day. The hen would be
sorry she had spoken so cross, and would seem pained at his going away
and would look anxiously for his return, and when he came back after
being out in the rain all night, she would be solicitious after his
health, and tell him he ought to wrap something around him, but he acted
as though he didn't care for his health, and he would go out again
and get chilled through. Finally the hen come off the nest with ten
chickens, and the rooster seemed very proud, and when anybody came out
to have a look at them he would crow, and seemed to say they were all
his chickens, though the hen was a long time hatching them, and if it
had been him that was setting on them he could have hatched them out in
a week, or died a trying. But the exposure told on him, and he went into
a decline, and one morning we found him dead. Do you know, I never see
a hen that seemed to realize a calamity as she did. She looked pale,
and her eyes looked red, and she seemed to be utterly crushed. If the
chickens, which were so young they could not realize that they were
little orphans, became noisy, and got to pulling and hauling over a
worm, and conducted themselves in an unseemly manner, she would talk to
them in hen language, with tears in her eyes, and it was a picture of
woe. But the next day a neighboring rooster got to looking through the
fence from the alley, and trying to flirt with her. At first she was
indignant, and seemed to tell him he ought to go about his business, and
leave her alone, but the dude kept clucking, and pretty soon the widowed
hen edged up towards the fence, and asked him to come in, but the hole
in the fence was too small for him, and then the chickens went out in
the alley, and the hen followed them out. I shall always think she told
the chickens to go out, so she would have an excuse to go after them,
and flirt with the rooster, and I think it is a perfect shame. She is
out in the alley half the time, and I could cuff her. It seems to me
wrong to so soon forget a deceased rooster, but I suppose a hen can't be
any more than human. Say, you don't want to buy a good dead rooster
do you? You could pick it and sell it to somebody that owes you, for a
spring chicken.”
“No, I don't want any deceased poultry, that died of grief, and you
better go home and watch your hen, or you will be bereaved some more,”
and the grocery man went out in the shed to see if the cat was over
its fit, and when he came back the boy was gone, and after a while the
grocery man saw a crowd in front of the store and he went out and found
the dead rooster lying on the vegetable stand, with a paper pinned on
its breast on which was a sign:--
THIS RUSTER DIDE OF COLIX.
FOR SALE CHEAP TO BOARDING HOUSE ONLY.
He took the dead rooster and threw it out in the street, and looked
up and down the street for the bad boy, and went in and hid a raw hide
where he could reach it handy.