“O joy, that in our embers
Is something that doth live,
That nature yet remembers
What was so fugitive.”
“To me the meanest flower that blooms, can give
Thoughts that do often lie too deep for tears.”
Strange that a man, after dwelling upon such poetry, should be willing to go into a poultry yard. But why not? I would rather do this willingly than be compelled, as I have been, and may be again, to hear a man say, after reading to him Wordsworth’s great Ode, “Why! of what use is such stuff? what does it prove? will it furnish a man with bread and butter? will it make the pot boil?” The people of the poultry-yard have been in such glee to-day, and contributed so much to the gladness of the day, that I must pay them a passing tribute. In the first place, our old gobbler, with his retinue of turkey wives, has been at the point of bursting with pride ever since sunrise. If the Grand Sultan of Turkey, (who must be the father of all turkeys,) cuts the same kind of capers in the presence of his hundred ladies, Turkey must be a great country for lean people to “laugh and grow fat.” Our gobbler is a feathered personification of Jack Falstaff, possessing his prominent trait of cowardice to perfection. I flourished a red handkerchief in his face this morning, and, by the way he strutted round and gobbled, you would have thought he was going to devour you. About ten minutes after this, I threw down a handful of corn, which was intended for his particular palate. While he was busy picking it up, a certain cock stepped alongside, and commenced picking too. The intruder, having got in the way of the gobbler, was suddenly pushed aside; whereupon the gentleman with spurs chuckled and “showed fight;” but the gobbler for a moment heeded him not. This the cock could not bear, so he pounced upon his enemy, and whipped him without mercy, until the coward and fool ran away, with his long train of affectionate wives following behind.
The cocks, hens and chickens which have figured in the yard to-day, would more than number a hundred; and such cackling, crowing, chuckling, and crying as they have made, was anything but a “concord of sweet sounds.” But the creatures have been happy, and it was therefore a pleasure to look at them. A young hen, this morning, made her first appearance with a large brood of chickens, yellow as gold, and this caused quite a sensation among the feathered husbands generally. The mother, as she rambled about, seemed to say, by her pompous air, to her daughterless friends—“Ar’n’t they beautiful? don’t you wish you had a few?” It was also very funny to see with what looks of astonishment the youthful cocks surveyed these “infant phenomenons.” As to our ducks, and geese, and guinea-hens, they have minded their business very well—the two former paddling about the creek and mud-puddles, and the latter, “between meals,” roaming at large through the orchard and garden, altogether the most beautiful and rational of the feathered tribes.