CHAPTER IV.
HOW "POULTRY-BOOKS" ARE MADE.
Soon after this, I learned that one Asa Rugg, of Pennsylvania (a nom de guerre), was in the possession of a breed of fowls that challenged all comparison for size and weight. They were called the Chittagong fowl, and were thus described in the poultry-books published in 1850:
"The fowl thus alluded to has been imported, within the last two or three years, into Pennsylvania, and ranks at the head of the list, in that region, for all the good qualities desirable in a domestic bird. The color is a streaked grey, rather than otherwise, and the portraits below" (my birds) "are fine samples of this great stock. They are designated as the Grey Chittagongs."
"Asa Rugg," in his letter to me, described this stock as being at the head of the races of poultry, having "the largest blood in them of any variety of fowl with which he was acquainted." The pair he first sent me were light-grey and streaked, and "at less than seven months old weighed over nineteen pounds."
He said, in that insinuating and delicate manner so peculiar to the habits of gentlemen who possess what another wishes to buy of them,—"I did not intend, my dear Mr. B——, to part with these magnificent specimens at any figure whatever. I assure you I had much rather retain them; for they are very fine, as you would say, could you see them. If, however, you are disposed to pay my price, I shall let you have them. I really shall regret their absence from my yard, however. Try and make up your mind to be satisfied with something else—won't you? These fowls I must keep, if possible," &c. &c.
Now, Asa knew very well, if he had charged me two hundred (instead of twenty) dollars for those grey fowls, I should have taken them from him. Of course I sent for them at once; and, within ten days, they were in my poultry-house, a new wonder for the hundreds who called to see my "superb" and "extraordinary" fowls.
A competitor turned up, a few months after this, a notorious breeder in P——, who, though a respectable man, otherwise, never knew a hen from a stove-pipe, but who had more money at that time than I had, and who, in the hen-trade, possessed the impudence of the devil, without the accompanying graces to carry out his object.
This man chanced, while in Pennsylvania, to hear Asa speak of me, and at once he stepped in to "head me" in that quarter. He bought all the "Grey Chittagongs" that Rugg had left (most of which, when they reached P——, happened to be dark red and brown), and forthwith set up an establishment in opposition to me; for what purpose I never knew. I did not know him from a side of sole-leather, I had never spoken to or of him, and I could not comprehend why this person should render himself, as he did, my future "death's head" in the fowl-trade.