his
business, for we are only plain people who are accustomed to the
self-made American hen. He seemed bored all the time, and I could see
by the way he acted that he pined to be back in Fremont, O., having his
picture taken for the Poultry-Keepers' Guide and American Eggist. He
still yearned for approbation. He was used to being made of, as your
mother says, and it galled him to enter into our plain, humdrum home
life.

I never saw such a haughty rooster in my life. Actually, when I got out
to feed him in the morning he would give me a cold, arrogant look that
hurt my feelings. I know I'm not what you would call an educated man nor
a polished man, though I claim to have a son that is both of said
things, but I hate to have a rooster crow over me because he has had
better advantages and better breeding than I have. So there was no love
lost between us, as you can see.

Directly I noticed that the hen began to have spells of vertigo. She
would be standing in a corner of the hen retreat, reverting to her
joyous childhood at Fremont, O., when all at once she would "fall
senseless to the earth and there lie prone upon the sward," to use the
words of a great writer whose address has been mislaid. She would remain
in this comytoes condition for between five minutes, perhaps. Then she
would rally a little, slowly pry open her large, mournful eyes, and seem
to murmur "Where am I?"

I could see that she was evading the egg issue in every way and ignoring
the great object for which she was created. With the ability to lay eggs
worth from $4 to $5.75 per dozen delivered on the cars, I could plainly
see that she proposed to roll up this great talent in a napkin and play
the invalid act. I do not disguise the fact, Henry, that I was mad. I
made a large rectangular affidavit in the inner temple of the horse-barn
that this poker-dot hen should never live to say that I had sent her to
the seashore for her health when she was eminently fitted by nature to
please the public with her lay.

I therefore gave her two weeks to decide on whether she would contribute
a few of her meritorious articles or insert herself into a chicken pie.

She still continued haughty to the last moment. So did her pardner. We
therefore treated ourselves to a $9 dinner in April.

I then got some expensive eggs from the effete east. They were not
robust eggs. They were layed during a time of great depression, I judge.
So they were that way themselves also.