looked mad to learn that there was nobody
dead but a rooster, when he had preached such a sermon on the subject.
"Yes, how soon we are forgotten when we are gone. Now, you would have
thought that rooster's hen would have remained faithful to him for a
week at least. I have watched them all the spring, and I never saw a
more perfect picture of devotion than that between the bantam rooster
and his hen. They were constantly together, and there was nothing too
good for her. He would dig up angle worms and call her, and when she
came up on a gallop and saw the great big worm on the ground, she would
look so proud of her rooster, and he would straighten up and look as
though he was saying to her, 'I'm a daisy,' and then she would look at
him as if she would like to bite him, and just as she was going to pick
up the worm he would snatch it and swallow it himself, and chuckle and
walk around and be full of business, as though wondering why she didn't
take the worm after he had dug it for her, and then the hen would look
disappointed at first and then she would look resigned, as much as to
say, 'Worms are too rich for my blood anyway, and the poor dear rooster
needs them more than I do, because he has to do all the crowing,' and
she would go off and find a grasshopper and eat it on the sly for fear
he would see her and complain because she didn't divide. O, I have never
seen anything that seemed to me so human as the relations between that
rooster and hen. He seemed to try to do everything for her. He would
make her stop cackling when she laid an egg, and he would try to cackle,
and crow over it as though he had laid it, and she would get off in a
corner and cluck in a modest, retiring manner, as though she wished to
convey the idea to the servant girls in the kitchen that the rooster had
to do all the hard work, and she was only a useless appendage, fit only
for society and company for him. But I was disgusted with him when the
poor hen was setting. The first week that she sat on the eggs he seemed
to get along first rate, because he had a couple of flower beds to dig
up, which a press of business had caused him to neglect before, and a
couple of neighbors' gardens to destroy, so he seemed to be glad to have
his hen retire to her boudoir and set, but after he had been shooed out
of the gardens and flower beds he seemed to be nervous, and evidently
wanted to be petted, and he would go near the hen and she would seem to
tell him to