ing the
listener, but always growing more musical, until the sun is fairly up,
the hens awake and the scratching of the day is ready to begin.

The note of the cock has been misrepresented. Shakespeare, following
usage, perhaps, has given it as "cock-a-doodle-doo," and that is the
accepted interpretation of it. But this does not convey the proper
impression. We should say that if human syllables can tell the story
they would assume some such form as:

_Ooauk-auk-auk-au-au-au-auk_!

It is a song that ought to be studied and glorified in print. Think
what a history it has! That identical combination of sounds which
wakes and maddens the sleeping citizen of to-day was heard by Noah and
his family with precisely the same cadence and accent in the ark. It
was that very crow that Peter heard when he had denied his Master. It
is a crow that has come down to us from Eden almost without a moment's
intermission. It is a crow which has passed round the world century
after century, and now passes, as the herald of the coming of the sun.
It may yet be made the theme of a majestic musical composition, now
that Wagner has come to teach men how to build a lyric drama upon
a phrase. Perhaps the coming American national song may have this
familiar crow for its inspiration and its burden. We might do worse,
perhaps, than to take the rooster for our national bird, even if we
reject his song as the basis of our national anthem. We took our eagle
from Rome, as France did hers; would it not have been wiser if we had
taken the cock instead, as France did after the Revolution? The Romans
and Greeks regarded the cock as a sacred bird. The principal thing
that the average school-boy remembers about Socrates is that he killed
himself immediately after ordering that a cock should be sacrificed to
Aesculapius; and some have held that the reason of his suicide was the
vociferousness of the cock, which he wanted to kill in revenge for the
misery it had caused him while he was trying to sleep or to think.

[Illustration: THE EARLY COCK]

The cock is a braver bird than the eagle. He has ever been a bold and
ready warrior, and has worn a warrior's spurs from the beginning. He
has one high soldierly quality: he knows when he is whipped; for who
has not seen him, when defeated in a gallant contest, sneak away to a
distant-corner to stand, with ruffled feathers, upon a single leg, the
very picture of humiliation and despair? And he is vigilant, for
ha