All this "helped the cause along" amazingly. It proved a most excellent mode of advertising my "superb," "magnificent," "splendid," "unsurpassable," "inapproachable" Grey Shanghaes.
The above articles found their way (somehow or other) into the papers of this country immediately; and, within sixty days afterwards, the price of "Bother'ems" went up from $12 and $15 to $50, $75, $100, and $150, the pair!!
"Cochin-Chinas" were now nowhar! But I was so as to be about yet.
CHAPTER XVI.
HEIGHT OF THE FEVER.
While this cage of Grey Shanghaes stood for an hour or two in the express-office of Adams & Co., in Boston, a servant came from the Revere House to inform me that "a gentleman desired to see me there, about some poultry."
As I never had had occasion to run round much after my customers, and, moreover, as I felt that the dignity of the business—(the dignity of the hen-trade!)—might possibly be compromised by my responding in person to this summons, I directed the servant to "say to the gentleman, if he wished to see me, that I should be at my office, No. 26 Washington-street, for a couple of hours,—after that, at my residence in Melrose."
The man retired, and half an hour afterwards a carriage stopped before my office-door. The gentleman was inside. He invited me to ride with him—(I could afford to ride with him)—to Adams & Co.'s office. He had seen the "Grey Shanghaes" intended for the Queen there.