CHAPTER VII.
ALARMING DEMONSTRATIONS.
My premises were literally besieged with visitors, and my family attendants were worn out with answering the door-bell summons, from morning till night.
"Is Mr. B—— at home? Can we see his Cochin-Chinas? Can we look at Mr. B——'s fowls? Might we take a look at the chickens?" were the questions from sun to sun again, almost; and I was absolutely compelled, in self-defence, to send the fowls away from home, for a while, for the sake of relief from the continual annoyances to which, in consequence of having them in my yard, I was subjected.
Fifteen, twenty, often forty callers in a single day, would come to see my "magnificent" Cochin-China fowls. But I sent them off, and then "the people" cried for them!
"Who's dead?" queried a stranger, passing my door one day, and observing the carriages and vehicles standing in a line along the front of my garden-fence.
"Nobody, I guess," said another; "that's where the Cochin-Chinas are kept."
"The what?"
"The Cochin-Chinas."
"What's them?"
"Don't you know?"