I sent her to the fowl-shows, where she "took 'em all down" clean, and invariably carried away the first premium in her class. Never was such a hen seen, before or since. I was offered a hundred, two hundred, five hundred dollars for her. I was poor; but didn't I own this hen "Fanny,"—the extraordinary, wonderful, magnificent, coal-black, blustering, but inapproachable and world-defying "Fanny"?
"I will give you eight hundred dollars for her," said a publisher to me, one day. "I want to put her in a book. She's a wonder! a star of the first magnitude! a diamond without blemish! a God-send to the world in 1854!"
At this moment "Fanny" crowed.
"Will you take eight hundred?" screamed the publisher, jumping nearly to the ceiling.
"No, sir."
"A thousand?"
"No."
"Two thousand?"
"No, sir."
"Five thousand?"