eriment,
and placed it in another nest. The next morning, when I entered the
barn, Biddy stretched out her neck, and declared that there was no use
in waiting any longer, and she was determined to leave the place, which
she accordingly did, discovering, to my surprise, two little dead,
crushed, flattened chickens, Poor things! I coaxed them on a shingle,
and took them into the house to show to a person whose name has been
often mentioned in these pages, and who, in all experimental matters,
considers my testimony good for nothing without the strongest
corroborative evidence. Notice now the unreasoning obstinacy with which
people will cling to their prejudices in the face of the most palpable
opposing facts.

"Where did these come from?" I asked.

"Probably the hen trod on them and killed them," he said.

"But there were seven whole eggs remaining, and the insane one was in
another nest."

"Well, he supposed some other hen might have laid in the nest after the
first had begun to sit. They often did."

"No, for I had counted them every day."

Here, then, was an equation to be produced between fifteen original eggs
on one side, and seven whole eggs, seven live chickens, two dead
chickens, and another egg on the other. My theory was, that two of the
eggs contained twins.

"But no," says Halicarnassus,--"such a thing was never known as two live
chickens from one egg.

"But these were dead chickens," I affirmed.

"But they were alive when they pecked out. They could not break the
shell when they were dead."

"But the two dead chickens may have been in the same shell with two live
ones, and, when the live ones broke the shell, the dead ones dropped
out."

"Nonsense!"

"But here are the facts, Mr. Gradgrind,--seven live chickens, two dead
chickens, seven whole eggs, and another egg to be accounted for, and
only fifteen eggs to account for them."

Yet, as if a thing that never happened on our farm is a thing that never
can happen, oblivious of the fact that "a pair of chickens" is a common
phrase enough,--simply because a man never saw twin chickens, he
maintains that there cannot be any such thing as twin chickens. This,
too, in spite of one egg I brought in large enough to hold a brood of
chickens. In fact, it does not look like an egg; it looks like the keel
of a man-of-war.

The problem remains unsolved. But never, while I remember my addition
table, can you make me believe that seven whole----But the ind