CHAPTER XVIII.
ONE OF THE FINAL KICKS.
I was chosen by somebody (who will here permit me to present them my thanks for the honor) as one of the judges to decide upon the merits of the birds then to be exhibited: and my colleagues on this Committee were Dr. J.C. Bennett, and Messrs. Andrews, Balch and Fussell.
On the morning of the opening of this show the names of the judges were first announced to the contributors. Immediately there followed a "hullabaloo" that would have done credit to any bedlam, ancient or modern, ever heard or dreamed of. The lead in this burst of rebellion amongst the hitherto "faithful" was taken by one prominent member, who announced publicly, then and there, that the selection of the judges was an infamous imposition. They were incompetent, dishonest, prejudiced, calculating, speculative, ambitious competitors. Moreover, that it had all been "contrived by that damned Burnham, who would rob a church-yard, or steal the cents off the eyes of his dead uncle, any time, for the price of a hen."
These were the gentleman's own expressive words. He added that he could stand anything in the hen-trade but this. This, however, he would not submit to. Burnham should be kicked out of that Committee, or he would kick himself out of his boots, and the Society's traces also;—a threat which did not seem to alarm or disturb anybody, "as I knows on," except this same tall, stout, athletic, brave, honorable, honest, truthful, smart, gentlemanly member of this Mutual Admiration Society!
Now, it was very well known, at this time, that the Committee of Judges had been chosen entirely without their own knowledge. So far as I was myself concerned, I should greatly have preferred at that time to have remained an outsider, because it would have then been quite as well for me to have contributed to the exhibition, where, with the "splendid specimens" I then possessed of the Cochin-China and Shanghae varieties of fowl, I could have knocked all the others "higher than a fence" in that show, as I had done in all the previous exhibitions where I had ever competed with the boys.
But the same power which had formed the Committee of Judges also provided that they must not be competitors. Thus, three or four of those persons who had at the previous exhibitions of this Society been the most extensive contributors,—men who had bred by far the largest assortments and quantities of good fowls up to this period, and who had till now paid ten or twenty dollars for one (compared with any other of the members) toward the good of the association, and in the furtherance of its objects,—these men were made the judges, and were cut off as contributors. I was satisfied, however, because I saw that the framing of the Report of this show would fall to my lot again; and I had no doubt that, under these circumstances, I could afford to be "persecuted" for the time being.
It is not in my nature to harm anybody; and those who are personally acquainted with me, know that I am constitutionally of a calm, retiring, meek, religious turn of mind. My aim in life is to "do unto others as I would have others do unto me." I "love my neighbor" (if he doesn't permit his hens to get into my garden) "as myself." And, "if a man smite me upon one cheek, I turn to him the other also," immediately, if not sooner. I never retaliate upon an enemy or an opponent—until I make sure that I have him where the hair is short.
I once knew of an extraordinary instance of patience that taught me a powerful lesson in submissiveness. It occurred in a Western court, where the judge (a most exemplary man, I remember) sat for two mortal days quietly listening to the arguments of a couple of contending lawyers in reference to the construction they desired him to assume in regard to a certain act of the Legislature of that State. When the two legal gentlemen had "thrown themselves," in this long and wearying debate, for forty-eight hours, his Honor cut off the controversy by remarking, very quietly,
"Gentlemen, this law that you have been speaking of has been repealed!"
I thought of this circumstance, and I permitted the hen-men to gas, to their hearts' content. When they got through with their anathemas, their spleen, and their stupidity, I informed them that the "Committee" had unanimously left to my charge the writing of the Report of that Exhibition.