Luke’s Peck at Girl’s Hose Starts Uproar in Subway.
Arthur Mullens, of New York City, works in paper and publishing houses, and all he finds he reads. If he had not read on a proof sheet yesterday that cruelty to animals was the unpardonable sin, he would not have enlarged the hole in the sack he carried, thereby freeing the eagle eyes and more eaglish beak of Luke, a rooster, and—but to start at the beginning.
Mullens was called from his home, at 460 Pearl Street, by a friend to deliver Luke, a prize rooster and a great fighter in his day, to an acquaintance in 112th Street. Luke was put into a thick paper bag, the neck of which was securely tied. Mullens swung him by his side as he walked to the subway.
On the train he read a speech that an assemblyman had delivered to a sleeping audience about an antivivisection bill. So he tenderly tore a tiny aperture in one side of the bag to give Luke the benefit of all the spare air there might be in a Broadway express.
A young woman sitting next to Mullens snatched at her knee, and then screamed like a siren whistle. Mullens woke with a frightened start, but was too late. Luke had withdrawn his head for an instant at the girl’s yelp of terror. Then he swelled his fighter’s neck, and lo! there was no bag. Luke was free.
The rooster started for authority, like true rebels, but the guard ducked. Luke next became bellicosely neutral; he did not care whose eyes he scratched. Men, women, children, oaths, prayers, and Mullens’ endearing calls got all mixed up.
The train reached Ninety-sixth Street—Luke’s first peck at the young woman’s hose had been near Seventy-second Street—before Mullens got back his ruffled charge. Mob rule seemed imminent, but the guard magnanimously permitted Luke to ride on to the Cathedral Parkway station. There Mullens, chastened, his humanitarianism gone, departed with the then sullen bird.
“I’ve been a hard-working man all my days,” he said, “but never have I had to do anything so hard as chaperon this sanguinary rooster.”