trying to find
a corner where he can gormandize alone. It is no matter that not a
single chicken is in pursuit, nor that there is enough and to spare for
all. He hears a voice we cannot hear, telling him that the Philistines
be upon him. And every chicken snatches his morsel and radiates from
every other as fast as his little legs can carry him. His selfishness
overpowers his sense,--which is, indeed, not a very signal victory, for
his selfishness is very strong and his sense is very weak. It is no
wonder that Hopeful was well-nigh moved to anger, and queried, "Why art
thou so tart, my brother?" when Christian said to him, "Thou talkest
like one upon whose head is the shell to this very day." To be compared
to a chicken is disparaging enough; but to be compared to a chicken so
very young that he has not yet quite divested himself of his shell must
be, as Pet Marjorie would say, "what Nature itself can't endure." A
little chicken's greedy crop blinds his eyes to every consideration
except that of the insect squirming in his bill. He is beautiful and
round and full of cunning ways, but he has no resources for an
emergency. He will lose his reckoning and be quite out at sea, though
only ten steps from home. He never knows enough to turn a corner. All
his intelligence is like light, moving only in straight lines. He is
impetuous and timid, and has not the smallest presence of mind or
sagacity to discern between friend and foe. He has no confidence in any
earthly power that does not reside in an old hen. Her cluck will he
follow to the last ditch, and to nothing else will he give heed. I am
afraid that the Interpreter was putting almost too fine a point upon it,
when he had Christiana and her children "into another room, where was a
hen and chickens, and bid them observe awhile. So one of the chickens
went to the trough to drink, and every time she drank she lift up her
head and her eyes towards heaven. 'See,' said he, 'what this little
chick doth, and learn of her to acknowledge whence your mercies come, by
receiving them with looking up.'" Doubtless the chick lift her eyes
towards heaven, but a close acquaintance with the race would put
anything but acknowledgment in the act. A gratitude that thanks Heaven
for favors received and then runs into a hole to prevent any other
person from sharing the benefit of those favors is a very questionable
kind of gratitude, and certainly should be confined to the bipeds that
wear feather