and
fresh, reserved for the purpose, I counted out and put into her nest;
and there she sat day after day and all day long, with a quietness, a
silent, patient persistence, which I admired, but could not in the least
imitate; for I kept continually poking under her and prying her up to
see how matters stood. Many hens would have resented so much
interference, but she knew it was sympathy, and not malice; besides, she
was very good-natured, and so was I, and we stood on the best possible
footing towards each other. A. G. says, "A hen's time is not much to
her"; and in this case his opinion was certainly correct.

One morning I thought I heard a faint noise. Routing out the good old
creature, that I might take observations, eggs still, and no chickens,
were discernible, but the tiniest, little, silvery, sunny-hearted chirp
that you ever heard, inside the eggs, and a little, tender pecking from
every imprisoned chick, standing at his crystal door, and, with his
faint, fairy knock, knock, knock, craving admission into the great
world. Never can I forget or describe the sensations of that moment;
and, as promise rapidly culminated in performance,--as the eggs ceased
to be eggs, and analyzed themselves into shattered shells and chirping
chickens,--it seemed as if I had been transported back to the beginning
of creation. Right before my eyes I saw, in my hands I held, the mystery
of life. These eggs, that had been laid under my very eyes as it were,
that I had my own self hunted and found and confiscated and
restored,--these eggs that I had broken and eaten a thousand times, and
learned of a surety to be nothing but eggs,--were before me now; and,
lo, they were eyes and feathers and bill and claws! Yes, little
puff-ball, I saw you when you were hard and cold and had no more life
than a Lima bean. I might have scrambled you, or boiled you, or made a
pasch-egg of you, and you would not have known that anything was
happening. If you had been cooked then, you would have been only an
omelet; now you may be a fricassee. As I looked at the nest, so lately
full only of white quiet, now swarming with downy life, and vocal with
low, soft music,

"I felt a newer life in every gale."

Oh, no one can tell, till he has chickens of his own, what delicious
emotions are stirred in the heart by their downy, appealing tenderness!

Swarming, however, as the nest seemed, it soon transpired that only
seven chickens had transpired. Eight egg