"Well, take him. He's worth twenty dollars; but you shall have him for ten dollars, being an old friend."
The doctor placed the huge crower in his gig immediately, went home, killed off two of the finest Dorking roosters in the county, and put the new comer into his nice poultry-house; congratulating himself upon having at last secured a "tip-top breeder," and nothing else.
At the end of the season, however, he complained to his friend the lawyer that he had had but very few eggs latterly; he could raise no chickens from them—not a one; and he didn't think much of the ten-dollar bird he purchased of him, any way.
"He's a rouser, Bill, surely," said the lawyer, with a knowing smirk, repeating the doctor's exclamation on first beholding the rooster.
"And a finer capon I never sold to anybody in my life!"
"A what!" screamed the doctor, springing towards his horse, which stood near by.
"What's the price of b'iled eggs, Bill?" roared the lawyer, in reply.
"Ten dollars a dozen, by thunder!" was the answer, as the doctor drove his rowels into the sides of his nag, and dashed away from his friend's gate a wiser if not a better man.
Many amateur poultry-raisers resorted to the most ridiculous and injurious shifts for remedies against the ills that hen-flesh is heir to. I have known certain friends who passed two or three hours every morning in running about their fowl-premises with pill-box and pepper-cup in hand, zealously dosing their drooping chickens, to their certain destruction. And some of the "doctors" went into jalap, in cases of colds, fevers, &c., in their fowls. We should as soon think of using arsenic, or any other poison, under such circumstances. The internal formation of a hen is scarcely believed to resemble that of a human being, surely; and why such medicinal applications, pray? This reminds us of a private joke, by the way, that was "let out" by a young fancier (out West) a little while ago.