_My Dear Son:_ We are still pegging along here at home in the same old
way, your mother and me. We are neither of us real well, and yet I
suppose we are as well as folks at our time of life could expect to be.
Your mother has a good deal of pain in her side all the while and I am
off my feed more or less in the morning. Doc has fixed me up some
condition powders that he says will straighten me out right away.
Perhaps so. Doc has straightened out a good many people in his time. I
wish I had as many dollars as he has straightened out people.
Most every Spring I've had to take a little dandelion root, limbered up
with gin, but this year that didn't seem to get there, as the boys say.
I fixed up a dost of it and took it day and night for a week till I wore
that old dandelion root clear down to skin and bone, but in ten days my
appetite was worse than ever and I had a head on me like a 2-year-old
colt. Dandelion root never served me that way before and your mother
thinks that the goodness is all out of it, may be. It's the same old
dandelion root that I've been using for twenty years, and I believe when
you've tried a thing and proved it's good, you ortent to change off.
I tried to get your mother to take a dost of it last week for the pain
in her side. Fixed up a two-quart jug of it for her, but she can't bear
the smell of gin so I had to take it myself. Dandelion is a great
purifier of the blood, Henry. Some days after I've been taking this
dandelion root for an hour or two I feel as if my blood was pretty near
pure enough. I feel like a new man.
You know I wrote you last winter, Henry, that I was going to buy some
new-fangled hens in the spring and go into the egg business. Well, I
sent east in March for a couple of fowls, one of each sect. They came at
$9 per pair over and above railroad charges, which was some $4.35 more
on top of that.
I thought that as soon as the hen got here and got her things off and
got rested she would proceed to lay some of these here high-priced eggs
which we read of in the Poultry-Keepers' Guide and American Eggist. But
she seemed pensive, and when I tried to get acquainted with her she
would cluck in a croupy tone of voice and go away.
The rooster was no doubt a fine-looking brute when he was shipped, but
when he got here he strolled around with a preoccupied air and seemed to
feel above us. He was a poker-dot rooster, with gray mane and tail, and
he was no doubt refined, but I did not think he should feel above his
business, for we are only plain people who are accustomed to the
self-made American hen. He seemed bored all the time, and I could see
by the way he acted that he pined to be back in Fremont, O., having his
picture taken for the Poultry-Keepers' Guide and American Eggist. He
still yearned for approbation. He was used to being made of, as your
mother says, and it galled him to enter into our plain, humdrum home
life.
I never saw such a haughty rooster in my life. Actually, when I got out
to feed him in the morning he would give me a cold, arrogant look that
hurt my feelings. I know I'm not what you would call an educated man nor
a polished man, though I claim to have a son that is both of said
things, but I hate to have a rooster crow over me because he has had
better advantages and better breeding than I have. So there was no love
lost between us, as you can see.
Directly I noticed that the hen began to have spells of vertigo. She
would be standing in a corner of the hen retreat, reverting to her
joyous childhood at Fremont, O., when all at once she would "fall
senseless to the earth and there lie prone upon the sward," to use the
words of a great writer whose address has been mislaid. She would remain
in this comytoes condition for between five minutes, perhaps. Then she
would rally a little, slowly pry open her large, mournful eyes, and seem
to murmur "Where am I?"
I could see that she was evading the egg issue in every way and ignoring
the great object for which she was created. With the ability to lay eggs
worth from $4 to $5.75 per dozen delivered on the cars, I could plainly
see that she proposed to roll up this great talent in a napkin and play
the invalid act. I do not disguise the fact, Henry, that I was mad. I
made a large rectangular affidavit in the inner temple of the horse-barn
that this poker-dot hen should never live to say that I had sent her to
the seashore for her health when she was eminently fitted by nature to
please the public with her lay.
I therefore gave her two weeks to decide on whether she would contribute
a few of her meritorious articles or insert herself into a chicken pie.
She still continued haughty to the last moment. So did her pardner. We
therefore treated ourselves to a $9 dinner in April.
I then got some expensive eggs from the effete east. They were not
robust eggs. They were layed during a time of great depression, I judge.
So they were that way themselves also. They came by express, and were
injured while being transferred at Chicago. No one has travelled over
that line of railroad since.
I do not say that the eggs were bad, but I say that their instincts and
their inner life wasn't what they ort to have been.
In early May I bought one of these inkybaters that does the work of ten
setting hens. I hoped to head off the hen so far as possible, simply
purchasing her literary efforts and editing them to suit myself. I
cannot endure the society of a low-bred hen, and a refined hen seems to
look down on me, and so I thought if I could get one of those ottymatic
inkybaters I could have the whole process under my own control, and if
the blooded hens wanted to go to the sanitarium and sit around there
with their hands in their pockets while the great hungry world of
traffic clamored for more spring chickens fried in butter they might do
so and be doggoned.
Thereupon I bought one of the medium size, two story hatchers and loaded
it with eggs. In my dreams I could see a long procession of fuzzy little
chickens marching out of my little inkybater arm in arm, every day or
two, while my bank account swelled up like a deceased horse.
I was dreaming one of these dreams night before last at midnight's holy
hour when I was rudely awakened by a gallon of cold water in one of my
ears. I arose in the darkness and received a squirt of cold water
through the window from our ever-watchful and courageous fire
department. I opened the casement for the purpose of thanking them for
this little demonstration, wholly unsolicited on my part, when I
discovered the hennery was in flames.
I went down to assist the department, forgetting to put on my pantaloons
as is my custom out of deference to the usages of good society. We saved
the other buildings, but the hatchery is a mass of smoldering ruins. So
am I.
It seems that the kerosene lamp which I kept burning in the inkybater
for the purpose of maintaining an even temperature, and also for the
purpose of showing the chickens the way to the elevator in case they
should hatch out in the night, had torched up and ignited the hatchery,
so to speak.
I see by my paper that we are importing 200,000,000 of hens' eggs from
Europe every year. It'll be 300,000,000 next year so far as I'm
concerned, Henry, and you can bet your little pleated jacket on it, too,
if you want to.
To-day I send P. O. order No. 143,876 for $3.50. I agree with the bible
that "the fool and his money are soon parted." Your father,
_Bill Nye._