ather than bring ill luck and the evil eye into the
house.

{More pride of bearing, and less to be proud of: p43.jpg}

The longer I study the cock, whether Black Spanish, White Leghorn,
Dorking, or the common barnyard fowl, the more intimately I am acquainted
with him, the less I am impressed with his character. He has more pride
of bearing, and less to be proud of, than any bird I know. He is
indolent, though he struts pompously over the grass as if the day were
all too short for his onerous duties. He calls the hens about him when I
throw corn from the basket, but many a time I have seen him swallow
hurriedly, and in private, some dainty titbit he has found unexpectedly.
He has no particular chivalry. He gives no special encouragement to his
hen when he becomes a prospective father, and renders little assistance
when the responsibilities become actualities. His only personal message
or contribution to the world is his raucous cock-a-doodle-doo, which,
being uttered most frequently at dawn, is the most ill-timed and
offensive of all musical notes. It is so unnecessary too, as if the day
didn't come soon enough without his warning; but I suppose he is anxious
to waken his hens and get them at their daily task, and so he disturbs
the entire community. In short, I dislike him; his swagger, his
autocratic strut, his greed, his irritating self-consciousness, his
endless parading of himself up and down in a procession of one.

Of course his character is largely the result of polygamy. His
weaknesses are only what might be expected; and as for the hens, I have
considerable respect for the patience, sobriety, and dignity with which
they endure an institution particularly offensive to all women. In their
case they do not even have the sustaining thought of its being an article
of religion, so they are to be complimented the more.

There is nothing on earth so feminine as a hen--not womanly, simply
feminine. Those men of insight who write the Woman's Page in the Sunday
newspapers study hens more than women, I sometimes think; at any rate,
their favourite types are all present on this poultry farm.

Some families of White Leghorns spend most of their time in the rickyard,
where they look extremely pretty, their slender white shapes and red
combs and wattles well set off by the background of golden hayricks.
There is a great oak-tree in one corner, with a tall ladder leaning
against its trunk, and a capital roosting-