n point of sense, as any one who ever saw
a red rooster will bear witness.

Hens are not intrinsically handsome, but they abundantly prove the truth
of the old adage, "Handsome is that handsome does." Lord Kaimes
describes one kind of beauty as that founded on the relations of
objects. And I am sure that the relation of a hen to a dozen fair,
white, pure eggs, and the relation of those eggs to puddings and
custards, and the twenty-five cents which they can have for the asking,
make even an ungainly hen, like many heroines in novels, "not beautiful,
but very interesting." "Twenty thousand dollars," said a connoisseur in
such matters, "is a handsome feature in any lady's face." And the
"cut-cut-cut-ca-D-A-H-cut" of a hen, whose word is as good as her bond
for an egg a day, is a handsome feather in any bird's coat. Once,
however, this trumpet of victory deceived me, though by no fault of the
hen's. I heard it sounding lustily, and I ransacked the barn on tiptoe
to discover the new-made nest and the exultant _mater-familias_. But
instead of a white old hen with yellow legs, who had laid her master
many eggs, there, on a barrel, stood brave Chanticleer, cackling away
for dear life,--Hercules holding the distaff among his Omphales!
Now--for there are many things to be learned from hens--mark the
injustice of the tyrant man. From time immemorial, girls--at least
country girls--have been taught that

"A whistling girl and a crowing hen
Always come to some bad end";

but not a word is said about a cackling rooster! Worse still, a crowing
hen is so rare a thing that its very existence is problematical. I never
heard of one out of that couplet. I have made diligent inquiry, but I
have not been able to find any person who had heard, or who had ever
seen or heard of any one who had heard, a crowing hen. But these very
hands have fed, these very eyes seen, and these ears heard a cackling
rooster! Where is manly impartiality, not to say chivalry? Why do men
overlook the crying sins of their own sex, and expend all their energies
in attempting to eradicate sins which never existed in the other?

I have lived among hens lately, and I know all about them. They are just
like people. Not a few only, but the whole human race, are
chicken-hearted.

Hens are fond of little mysteries. With tons of hay at their disposal,
they will steal a nest in a discarded feeding-trough. With nobody in the
world to harbor an evil thought agains