I paid him forty dollars down, and seized my prize, though she proved hard to catch.
"She's much like the Frenchman's flea, sir," said her previous possessor. "Put your finger on her, and she's never there. Feed her well, however, keep her in good quarters, let her do as she pleases, and she'll always crow—always, sir. Hear that? You can't stop her, unless you stop her breath. She always crows and sings. There it is again! Isn't that a crow, for a hen—eh?"
It was, indeed.
"Good-day," said the Brookline gentleman, quietly pocketing his money. "Fanny will please you, I've no doubt."
"Fanny?" I queried.
"Yes; I call her 'Fanny Fern,'" said the stranger to me, as I entered my wagon; and, half an hour afterwards, my forty-dollar cock-hen, "Fanny Fern," was crowing again furiously, lustily, magnificently, on the bright-green lawn beneath my own parlor-windows.
"Fanny" proved a thorough trump. Bantams, Games, Cochins, Dorkings, Shanghaes, Bother'ems, were nowhere when "Fanny" was round. She could outcrow the lustiest feathered orchestra ever collected together in Christendom. She was a wonder, that redoubtable but frisky, flashy, sprightly, sputtery, spunky "Fanny Fern."
And didn't the boys run after her? Well, they did! And didn't they want to buy her? Didn't they bid high for her, at last? Didn't everybody flock to see her, and to hear "Fanny" crow? And didn't she continue to crow, too? Ah! it was heaven, indeed (and sometimes the other thing), to listen to "Fanny's" voice.
When "Fanny" opened her mouth, everybody held their breath and listened. "Fanny" crowed to some purpose, verily! She crowed lustily against oppression, and vice, and wrong, and injustice; and she crowed aloud (with her best strength) in behalf of injured innocence, and virtue, and merit, exalted or humble.
And, finally, "Fanny" hatched a brace of chickens; and didn't she crow for and over them? She now cackled and scratched, and crowed harder and louder and shriller than ever. The people stopped in the street to listen to her; old men heard her; young men sought after her; all the women began to "swear" by her; the children thronged to see her; the newspapers all talked about her; and thousands of books were printed about my charming, astonishing, remarkable, crowing "Fanny Fern."