The History of The Hen Fever Part 18

"'Hi! hi!' said Green, soothingly. 'Pagy! Pagy! come, now, be quiet!--will you?'

"'Let me out!' cried Hydrarchos, in great alarm. The huge bird was polking up to him. 'Let me out, I say!'

"'I never knew it to act so before,' said Green, fumbling at the lock.

"A whirr, a rush, a whizzing of the wings, and the bird was down on the doctor, treading on his heels, and pecking at the nape of his neck.

"'Pagy! Pagy!' supplicated the owner.

"But the angry bird would not listen to reason, and Sap received a thump on the head for his pains. And now both rushed for the opening door, stumbling and falling prostrate in their eagerness to escape. The monster bird danced a moment on their prostrate bodies, and then darted forth from its late prison-house.

"It rushed through a couple of grape-houses, carrying destruction in its progress. It scoured through the flower-beds, ruining the bright parterres. Mrs. Green, who was walking in the garden with her child, saw the horrid apparition, and stood paralyzed with terror. In an instant she was thrown down and trampled under foot, shrieking and clasping her infant in her arms.

"Mr. Green beheld this last atrocity, and his conjugal affection overcame his love of birds. He caught up his fowling-piece and fired at the ungrateful monster; the shot ripped up some of its tail-feathers, but failed to inflict a mortal wound,--nothing short of a field-piece could produce an impression on that living ma.s.s. Away sped the fowl to the railroad-track, down which it rushed with headlong speed. But its career was brief; an express train, coming up in an opposite direction, struck it full in front, and rushed on, scattering feathers, wings and drum-sticks, wildly in the air.

"'Tell me, doctor,' gasped Green, 'what do you think of my Great PaG.o.da?'

"'Great PaG.o.da!' said the professor, in indignant disdain. 'That was a Struthio,--Greek, _Strothous_,--in other words, an ostrich. If you hadn't belonged to the genus _Asinus_, you'd have known that, without asking me. Good-morning, Mr. Green.'

"'Where is the monster?' cried Mrs. Green. 'I believe the poor child is killed. O, Sap, I didn't expect this of you!'

"'Be quiet, my dear,' said Green; 'it was only an experiment.'

"'An experiment, Mr. Green!' retorted the lady, sharply; 'your wife and child nearly killed, and you call it an experiment! Nurturing ostriches to devour your off-spring! I wonder you don't take to raising elephants.'

"'No danger of that, Maria,' replied her husband, meekly. 'I have "seen the elephant." And to-morrow I shall send my entire stock to the auction-room,--Shanghaes, Chittagongs, Brahma Pootras, Cochins, Warhens and Warhoos. They're nice birds, great layers, small eaters, but they--_don't pay_.'"

Mr. Green was cured, of course; and though his antic.i.p.ations were great, yet he had his predecessors and his successors in the hen traffic, who were almost as sanguine as he, and who not only "paid through the nose"

for their experience, but who came off, in the end, really, with quite as little success. Mr. Green was but one of many. Mr. Green was one of "the people."

It will be remembered that my correspondents allude to the fowls they "_see in the noospapers_."

_I_ had seen these birds, in the same way, before _they_ did. And a London dealer wrote me that he could send me a lot of Egleton's "famous"

stock, "which took the three first premiums at a metropolitan show, and two descendants of which, at the close of the late exhibition, were sold _at auction_ for forty-eight guineas ($262)."

I immediately sent out for a few of these monsters. They were described to me as being of enormous size, and _feathered upon the legs_; and I was now somewhat surprised to note that several of the English societies decided that the _true_ "Cochin-China" fowl (as _they_ term this variety) come only with feathered legs. The very stock above alluded to, however, came direct from the city of _Shanghae_; and duplicate birds of the same blood were delineated in the _London Ill.u.s.trated News_. The metropolitan a.s.sociations required that all Cochin-China fowls put in compet.i.tion for premiums _must_ be feathered-legged. This was a new decision, as it is well known that every importation of domestic fowl yet brought out from China direct come more or less _clean_-legged; and that fully one half of their progeny are so, with the most careful breeding, both in England and in this country. This was immaterial, however; and I repeated the story to my correspondents in good faith, and sent them copies of the portraits of these new, "extraordinary,"

"splendid" and "astonishing" hens, precisely as their history and pictures came to _me_. The result can be fancied. Here is the "original" portrait of one of 'em.

[Ill.u.s.tration: ONE OF 'EM.]

This was the kind of thing that "took down" the outsiders. Orders for this strain of pure blood poured in upon me, and I supplied them. I trust the purchasers were always satisfied. In _my_ case, it might answer; but I would not recommend the practice _generally_ of purchasing chickens out of the newspapers. Such a portrait as the above _might_ chance to be a little fanciful; or, _perhaps_, it might be a trifling exaggeration, you see. Yet this was the breed that were always "put in the _newspapers_." You very rarely found them in your coops, though!

CHAPTER XXVI.

"POLICY THE BEST HONESTY."

This reversion of the old saying that "honesty's the best policy" seemed to have finally attained among many hen-men, and the ambition to dispose of their now large surplus stock, at the best possible prices, had become very general, while the means to accomplish it came to be immaterial, so that they got rid of their fancy poultry at fancy figures.

Nothing that could be said against me and my stock was neglected, or omitted to be said. But, as long as fowls would sell at all, I had my full share of the trade, notwithstanding this. The following veritable letter, received from a noted "breeder," in 1853, will explain itself; and it exhibits the disposition of more than _one_ huckster still left around us. It will be observed that this gentleman called me his "friend"!

"FRIEND B----: What has become of all the trade? I haven't sold twenty dollars' worth of chickens, in a month! I've now got over three hundred of these curses on hand--and they're eating me up, alive. What'll we do with them? Do you want them? Will you buy them--_any_how? And give what you like for them.

"They are a better lot than you ever owned,--everybody says so,--Greys, Cochins (_pure_) and Shanghaes. D--n the business! I'm sick of it. My fowls and fixin's cost me over twelve hundred dollars. What do you think of an auction? Has the bottom fallen out, entirely? Could I get back two or three dollars apiece for this lot, do you think, at public sale?

"B---- is stuck with about five hundred of the gormandisers. I'm glad of it--glad--_glad_! An't you? He always lammed you, as well as me; and though I think _you_ can swinge the green 'uns as cutely as 'most any of 'em, _he_ has been an eye-sore for three years that ought to be put down. He got his stock of you, he says,--but (no offence to you, friend B----), it an't worth a cuss. All of it's sick and lousy, and he shan't sell no more fowls, if I can help it.

"Have you seen W----'s stock, lately? Isn't _he_ a beauty! I told him, last week, he'd ought to be ashamed of himself ever to gone into this trade, at all. He's well enough off, without stealing the bread out of the mouths of them that's a long way honester than he ever was. I'll have a lick at _him_, yet.

"Come and see my stock,--and buy it. I don't want it. I must give it up. I'm too busy about something else. Come--will you? I don't say anything against your fowls, outside; but you know, as well as I do, that you haven't got the _real thing_. Bennett says you haven't, and everybody else says so. As to your 'importations,' you never had a fowl that was imported from any further off than Cape Cod, and you know it! But that is neither here nor there. _I_ don't care a fig how much you gouge 'em. All I want is to get rid of _mine_. If you don't buy them, I shall sell them,--somehow,--or give them away, sure. They shan't eat me up, nohow.

"They don't eat nothing--these fowls don't! O, what an infernal humbug this is! I never got much out of it, though. I tell everybody what all the rest of you do,--of course. But _I_ had rather keep the same number of Suffolk pigs, anyhow, so far as that's concerned. I an't afraid of your showing this letter to n.o.body--ha! ha! So I don't mark it 'private.' But of all the owdacious humbugs that ever this country saw, _this_ thing is the steepest,--and you know it!

"Write me and say what you'll give me for my lot. I won't peach on you. You can buy 'em on your own terms. I want to get out of it.

And you may say just what you've a mind about 'em. I'll back you, of course. Couldn't you take them, and get up another fresh guy on a 'new importation'?? That's it. Come, now, friend B----, help me out. And answer immediately. All I want is to get out of it, and catch _me_ there again if you can!

"Yours, &c.,

"P.S. If you don't buy them, I shall kill the brutes, and send 'em to market; though they are too _poor_ for that, I think."

This complimentary epistle from a brother-fancier was rather cool, but it didn't equal the following. I had more than one of this sort, too,--of which I had no occasion, for the time being, to take the slightest notice, for I had "other fish to fry," decidedly!

"MR. BURNHAM.--SIR: How is it that you have the impudence to try to palm off on the public those fowls of yours for genuine '_imported_ ones,' when it is known that you bought them all of me, and A----, and B----? How can you sleep nights? Don't you feel a squirming in your conscience? Or is it made of ingy-rubber, or gutter-perchy?

You have made hundreds, and I don't know but thousands of dollars, by your impudence and bare-faced deceit. They are _not_ genuine fowls. I say this _bolely_. I wish there was a noospaper that would show the inderpendence to print an article that I could rite for it, on this subject of poletry. If I wouldn't make you stare, and shet your eyes up, too, then I aint no judge of swindling!

"Why don't you act like a man? _Carnt_ you? Havn't you got the pluck to own up that other people have done for you what you never had the gumption to do for yourself? Why don't you act fair,--and tell where the genuine fowls can be got, and of who? You're a doing the poultry business more hurt than all the rest of the men in the country is doing, or ever did, or ever will, sir.

"I don't mind a man's being sharp, and looking out for himself. _I_ do that. But I carn't humbug people as you are doing,--and I won't, neither. You're sticking it into the people nicely,--don't you think you are? And they _believe_ it, too! The people believes what you tell them, and sucks it all down, and wants more of it. And you keep a giving it to them, too! How long do you suppose such infamous things as these can last? I hope this letter will do you good. I havn't no ends to answer. I keep but a few fowls, and I have never charged over twenty-five dollars a pair for the best of them,--as you know. _You_ get fifty or a hundred dollars a pair. So the noospapers say, but I believe you lie when they say so. You carn't come this over _me_! You don't pull none of that wool over _my_ eyes! No, sir!

"If you want to get an honest living,--get it! I don't say nothin against that; you've a rite to. But don't cheat the people out of their eye-teeth, by telling these stories that you carn't prove.[11] You've no right to. You sell fowls, by this means, but you don't get no clear conscience by it. It's wrong, Mr. Burnum, and you know it. While you do this, n.o.body can sell no fowls except _you_. Give other people a chance, say I. I wouldn't do this, nohow, to sell my fowls at your expense; and I go for having everybody do unto others as _I_ would do to _them_. This is moral and Christian-like, and you'd better adopt it. That's my advice, and I don't charge nothing for it. So, no more at present--from

"Your, resp'y,

These missives never disturbed me. Why should they? These very men would have sold, from that very stock,--_had_ done so, repeatedly, before,--whatever a buyer sought to purchase. I never knew either of them to permit the chance of a sale to pa.s.s by him, on account of the _variety_ of bird sought! They invariably possessed whatever was wanted.

With them, "_policy_ was the best _honesty_." I did not complain. I was a "hen-man," but no Mentor.

[11] I never found, in my limited experience in this business, any particular necessity for attempting to prove anything. "The people"

wanted FOWLS--not _proofs_!