s
a funeral procession stringing out of my front gate half the time.

"What I want is a young woman that can darn a sock without working
two or three tumors into it, cook in a plain economical way without
pampering the appetites of hired help, do chores around the barn
and assist me in accumulating property.

I. D. P."

This last letter contains a small tress of dark hair that feels like a
bunch of barbed wire when drawn through the fingers, and has a tendency
to "crock."

THE HATEFUL HEN

XI

The following inquiries and replies have been awaiting publication and I
shall print them here if the reader has no objections. I do not care to
keep correspondents waiting too long for fear they will get tired and
fail to write me in the future when they want to know anything. Mr.
Earnest Pendergast writes from Puyallup as follows:

"Why do you not try to improve your appearance more? I think you could
if you would, and we would all be so glad. You either have a very
malicious artist, or else your features must pain you a good deal at
times. Why don't you grow a mustache?"

These remarks, of course, are a little bit personal, Earnest, but still
they show your goodness of heart. I fear that you are cursed with the
fatal gift of beauty yourself and wish to have others go with you on
the downward way. You ask why I do not grow a mustache, and I tell you
frankly that it is for the public good that I do not. I used to wear a
long, drooping and beautiful mustache, which was well received in
society, and, under the quiet stars and opportune circumstances, gave
good satisfaction; but at last the hour came when I felt that I must
decide between this long, silky mustache and soft-boiled eggs, of which
I am passionately fond. I hope that you understand my position, Earnest,
and that I am studying the public welfare more than my own at all times.

Sassafras Oleson, of South Deadman, writes to know something of the care
of fowls in the spring and summer. "Do you know," he asks, "anything of
the best methods for feeding young orphan chickens? Is there any way to
prevent hens from stealing their nests and sitting on inanimate objects?
Tell us as tersely as possible what your own experience has been with
hens."

To speak tersely of the hen and her mission in life seems to me almost
sacrilege. It is at least in poor taste. The hen and her wor