I am convinced that there is great economy in keeping hens if we have
sufficient room for them and a thorough knowledge of how to manage the
fowl properly. But to the professional man, who is not familiar with the
habits of the hen, and whose mind does not naturally and instinctively
turn henward I would say: Shun her as you would the deadly upas tree of
Piscataquis County, Me.
Nature has endowed the hen with but a limited amount of brain-force.
Any one will notice that if he will compare the skull of the average
self-made hen with that of Daniel Webster, taking careful measurements
directly over the top from one ear to the other, the well-informed
brain student will at once notice a great falling-off in the region of
reverence and an abnormal bulging out in the location of alimentiveness.
Now take your tape-measure and, beginning at memory, pass carefully over
the occipital bone to the base of the brain in the region of love of
home and offspring and you will see that, while the hen suffers much
in comparison with the statement in the relative size of sublimity,
reflection, spirituality, time, tune, etc., when it comes to love of
home and offspring she shines forth with great splendor.
The hen does not care for the sublime in nature. Neither does she care
for music. Music hath no charms to soften her tough old breast. But she
loves her home and her country. I have sought to promote the interests
of the hen to some extent, but I have not been a marked success in that
line.
I can write a poem in fifteen minutes. I always could dash off a poem
whenever I wanted to, and a very good poem, too, for a dashed poem. I
could write a speech for a friend in congress--a speech that would be
printed in the Congressional Record and go all over the United States
and be read by no one. I could enter the field of letters anywhere and
attract attention, but when it comes to setting a hen I feel that I am
not worthy. I never feel my utter unworthiness as I do in the presence
of a setting hen.
When the adult hen in my presence expresses a desire to set I excuse
myself and go away. That is the supreme moment when a hen desires to be
alone. That is no time for me to introduce my shallow levity. I never do
it.
It is after death that I most fully appreciate the hen. When she has
been cut down early in life and fried I respect her. No one can look
upon the still features of a young hen overtaken by death in life's
young morning, snuffed out as it were, like an old tin lantern in a gale
of wind, without being visibly affected.
But it is not the hen who desires to set for the purpose of getting out
an early edition of spring chickens that I am averse to. It is the aged
hen, who is in her dotage, and whose eggs, also, are in their second
childhood. Upon this hen I shower my anathemas. Overlooked by the
pruning-hook of time, shallow in her remarks, and a wall-flower in
society, she deposits her quota of eggs in the catnip conservatory, far
from the haunts of men, and then in August, when eggs are extremely
low and her collection of no value to any one but the antiquarian, she
proudly calls attention to her summer's work.
This hen does not win the general confidence. Shunned by good society
during life, her death is only regretted by those who are called upon to
assist at her obsequies. Selfish through life, her death is regarded as
a calamity by those alone who are expected to eat her.
And what has such a hen to look back upon in her closing hours? A long
life, perhaps, for longevity is one of the characteristics of this class
of hens; but of what has that life been productive? How many golden
hours has she frittered away hovering over a porcelain doorknob trying
to hatch out a litter of Queen Anne cottages. How many nights has she
passed in solitude on her lonely nest, with a heart filled with
bitterness toward all mankind, hoping on against hope that in the fall
she would come off the nest with a cunning little brick block, perhaps.
Such is the history of the aimless hen. While others were at work she
stood around with her hands in her pockets and criticised the policy of
those who labored, and when the summer waned she came forth with nothing
but regret to wander listlessly about and freeze off some more of her
feet during the winter. For such a hen death can have no terrors.
[Illustration: 0336]