"Will you permit me to send them to you as a present, sir?" he continued.
I did not want them, any way. I had a full supply.
"What will you charge me, Mr. B——, to allow them to be sent to you?" continued the fancier, desperately, and resolutely, at last.
I saw he was determined, and I took his fowls (fifteen of them), and gave him ten dollars.
He smiled.
"I have had the hen fever," he added, "badly—but I am better of it. I am convalescent, now," said the doctor. "You see what I have here for houses; cost me over seven hundred dollars; my birds over four hundred more; grain and care for a year, a hundred more. I am satisfied! Your money, here, is the first dollar I ever received in return for my investment. You see what I have left out of my venture of twelve or thirteen hundred dollars; the manure, and—and—the lice!"
Such were the exact facts! His stock was selected from the Marsh and Forbes importations, and the birds were good; but, by the time he got ready to believe that it wasn't all gold that glittered, the sale of this variety of fowl had passed by. A chance purchaser happened to come along soon after, however, who "hadn't read the papers" so attentively as some of us had, and who wanted these very fowls. I sold them to him, "cheap as a broom," because the fever for this kind of bird was rapidly declining. He paid me only $150 for this lot; which was a bargain, of a truth. The buyer was satisfied, however, and so was I.
These were but isolated instances. Scores and hundreds of gentlemen and amateur fanciers found themselves in a similar predicament, at the end of one or two or three years. Without possessing a single particle of knowledge requisite to the successful accomplishment of their purpose,—utterly ignorant of the first rudiments of the business,—they jumped into it, without reason, forgetting the wholesome advice contained in the musty adage, "look before you leap." And, after sinking tens and hundreds or (in some cases) thousands of dollars in experiments, they woke up to find that they had had the fever badly, but, fortunately, were at last convalescent!
I was busy, all this time, in supplying my friends with "pure-bred" stock, however, and had very little leisure to tarry to sympathize with these "poor creeturs." The demand for my stock continued, and the best year's business I ever enjoyed, was from the spring of 1853 to May and June, 1854; when it commenced to fall off very sensibly, and the prospect became dubious, for future operations, even with me.