place on a long branch running
at right angles with the ladder. I try to spend a quarter of an hour
there every night before supper, just for the pleasure of seeing the
feathered "women-folks" mount that ladder.

A dozen of them surround the foot, waiting restlessly for their turn. One
little white lady flutters up on the lowest round and perches there until
she reviews the past, faces the present, and forecasts the future; during
which time she is gathering courage for the next jump. She cackles,
takes up one foot and then the other, tilts back and forth, holds up her
skirts and drops them again, cocks her head nervously to see whether they
are all staring at her below, gives half a dozen preliminary springs
which mean nothing, declares she can't and won't go up any faster, unties
her bonnet strings and pushes back her hair, pulls down her dress to
cover her toes, and finally alights on the next round, swaying to and fro
until she gains her equilibrium, when she proceeds to enact the same
scene over again.

All this time the hens at the foot of the ladder are criticising her
methods and exclaiming at the length of time she requires in mounting;
while the cocks stroll about the yard keeping one eye on the ladder,
picking up a seed here and there, and giving a masculine sneer now and
then at the too-familiar scene. They approach the party at intervals,
but only to remark that it always makes a man laugh to see a woman go up
a ladder. The next hen, stirred to the depths by this speech, flies up
entirely too fast, loses her head, tumbles off the top round, and has to
make the ascent over again. Thus it goes on and on, this _petite comedie
humaine_, and I could enjoy it with my whole heart if Mr. Heaven did not
insist on sharing the spectacle with me. He is so inexpressibly dull, so
destitute of humour, that I did not think it likely he would see in the
performance anything more than a flock of hens going up a ladder to
roost. But he did; for there is no man so blind that he cannot see the
follies of women; and, when he forgot himself so far as to utter a few
genial, silly, well-worn reflections upon femininity at large, I turned
upon him and revealed to him some of the characteristics of his own sex,
gained from an exhaustive study of the barnyard fowl of the masculine
gender. He went into the house discomfited, though chuckling a little at
my vehemence; but at least I have made it for ever impossible for him to