er than this. If these is chickens, I don't want to see no Big
Trees."

Well, I sold them chickens all right for a dollar and two bits, which
was better than I expected, and got an order for more. About ten days
later I got a letter from the commission house.

"We are returnin' a sample of your Arts and Crafts chickens with the
lovin' marks of the teeth still onto him," says they. "Don't send any
more till they stops pursuin' of the nimble grasshopper. Dentist bill
will foller."

With the letter came the remains of one of the chickens. Tusky and I,
very indignant, cooked her for supper. She was tough, all right. We
thought she might do better biled, so we put her in the pot over night.
Nary bit. Well, then we got interested. Tusky kep' the fire goin' and I
rustled greasewood. We cooked her three days and three nights. At the
end of that time she was sort of pale and frazzled, but still givin'
points to three-year-old jerky on cohesion and other uncompromisin'
forces of Nature. We buried her then, and went out back to recuperate.

There we could gaze on the smilin' landscape, dotted by about four
hundred long-laigged chickens swoopin' here and there after
grasshoppers.

"We got to stop that," says I.

"We can't," murmured Tusky, inspired. "We can't. It's born in 'em; it's
primal instinct, like the love of a mother for her young, and it can't
be eradicated! Them chickens is constructed by a divine providence for
the express purpose of chasin' grasshoppers, just as the beaver is made
for building dams, and the cow-puncher is made for whisky and
faro-games. We can't keep 'em from it. If we was to shut 'em in a dark
cellar, they'd flop after imaginary grasshoppers in their dreams, and
die emaciated in the midst of plenty. Jimmy, we're up agin the Cosmos,
the oversoul----" Oh, he had the medicine tongue, Tusky had, and risin'
on the wings of eloquence that way, he had me faded in ten minutes. In
fifteen I was wedded solid to the notion that the bottom had dropped out
of the chicken business. I think now that if we'd shut them hens up, we
might have--still, I don't know; they was a good deal in what Tusky
said.

"Tuscarora Maxillary," says I, "did you ever stop to entertain that
beautiful thought that if all the dumfoolishness possessed now by the
human race could be gathered together, and lined up alongside of us,
the first feller to come along would say to it, 'Why, hello, Solomon!'"

We quit the notion of chickens