It happened that once, during a walk in the fields, I found a duck’s egg right in my path. We had then no ducks in our farm-yard, and I thought it would be a fine idea to have one for a pet. So I wrapped the egg in wool, and put it into a basket, which I hung in a warm corner by the kitchen-fire. My brothers laughed at me, saying that the egg would never be any thing more than an egg, if left there; but I had faith to believe that I should some time see a fine duckling peeping out of the shell, very much to the astonishment of all unbelieving boys. I used to go to the basket, lift up the wool and look at that little blue-hued treasure three or four times a day, or take it out and hold it against my bosom, and breathe upon it in anxious expectation; until I began to think that a watched egg never would hatch. But my tiresome suspense finally came to a happy end. At about the time when, if he had had a mother, she would have been looking for him, Jack, the drake, presented his bill to the world that owed him a living. He came out as plump and hearty a little fowl as could reasonably have been expected. But what to do with him was the question. After a while, I concluded to take him to a hen who had just hatched a brood of chickens, thinking that, as he was a friendless orphan, she might adopt him for charity’s sake. But Biddy was already like the celebrated
“Old woman that lived in a shoe,
Who had so many children she didn’t know what to do.”
With thirteen little ones of her own, and living in a small and rather an inconvenient coop, it was no wonder that she felt unwilling to have any addition to her family. But she might have declined civilly. I am afraid she was a sad vixen, for no sooner did she see the poor duckling among her chickens, than she strode up to him, and with one peck tore the skin from his head,—scalped him,—the old savage! I rescued Jack from her as soon as possible, and dressed his wound with lint as well as I could, for I felt something like a parent to the fowl myself. He recovered after a while, but, unfortunately, no feathers grew again on his head,—he was always quite bald,—which gave him an appearance of great age. I once tried to remedy this evil by sticking some feathers on to his head with tar; but, like all other wigs, it deceived no one, only making him look older and queerer than ever. What made the matter worse was, that I had selected some long and very bright feathers, which stood up so bold on his head that the other fowls resented it, and pecked at the poor wig till they pecked it all off.
While Jack was yet young, he one day fell into the cistern, which had been left open. Of course he could not get out, and he soon tired of swimming, I suppose, and sunk. At least, when he was drawn up, he looked as though he had been in the water a long time, and seemed quite dead. Yet, hoping to revive him, I placed him in his old basket of wool, which I set down on the hearth. He did indeed come to life, but the first thing the silly creature did on leaving his nest was to run into the midst of the fire, and before I could get him out, he was very badly burned. He recovered from this also, but with bare spots all over his body. In his tail there never afterwards grew more than three short feathers. But his trials were not over yet. After he was full-grown, he was once found fast by one leg in a great iron rat-trap. When he was released, his leg was found to be broken. But my brother William, who was then inclined to be a doctor, which he has since become, and who had watched my father during surgical operations, splintered and bound up the broken limb, and kept the patient under a barrel for a week, so that he should not attempt to use it. At the end of that time, Jack could get about a little, but with a very bad limp, which he never got over. But as the duck family never had the name of walking very handsomely, that was no great matter.
After all these accidents and mishaps, I hardly need tell you that Jack had little beauty to boast of, or plume himself upon. He was in truth sadly disfigured,—about the ugliest fowl possible to meet in a long day’s journey. Indeed, he used to be shown up to people as a curiosity on account of his ugliness.
I remember a little city girl coming to see me that summer. She talked a great deal about her fine wax-dolls with rolling eyes and jointed legs, her white, curly French lap-dog, and, best and prettiest of every thing, her beautiful yellow canary-bird, which sung and sung all the day long. I grew almost dizzy with hearing of such grand and wonderful things, and sat with my mouth wide open to swallow her great stories. At last, she turned to me and asked, with a curl of her pretty red lips, “Have you no pet-birds, little girl?” Now, she always called me “little girl,” though I was a year older and a head taller than she. I replied, “Yes, I have one,” and led the way to the back-yard, where I introduced her to Jack. I thought I should have died of laughter when she came to see him. Such faces as she made up!
I am sorry to say, that the other fowls in the yard, from the oldest hen down to the rooster without spurs, and even to the green goslings, seemed to see and feel Jack’s want of personal pretensions and attractions, and always treated him with marked contempt, not to say cruelty. The little chickens followed him about, peeping and cackling with derision, very much as the naughty children of the old Bible times mocked at the good, bald-headed prophet. But poor Jack didn’t have it in his power to punish the ill-mannered creatures as Elisha did those saucy children, when he called the hungry she-bears to put a stop to their wicked fun. In fact, I don’t think he would have done so if he could, for all this hard treatment never made him angry or disobliging. He had an excellent temper, and was always meek and quiet, though there was a melancholy hang to his bald head, and his three lonesome tail-feathers drooped sadly toward the ground. When he was ever so lean and hungry, he would gallantly give up his dinner to the plump, glossy-breasted pullets, though they would put on lofty airs, step lightly, eye him scornfully, and seem to be making fun of his queer looks all the time. He took every thing so kindly! He was like a few, a very few people we meet, who, the uglier they grow, the more goodness they have at heart, and the worse the world treats them, the better they are to it.
But Jack had one true friend. I liked him, and more than once defended him from cross old hens, and tyrannical cocks. But perhaps my love was too much mixed up with pity for him to have felt highly complimented by it. Yet he seemed to cherish a great affection for me, and to look up to me as his guardian and protector.
As you have seen, Jack was always getting into scrapes, and at last he got into one which even I could not get him out of. He one day rashly swam out into the mill-pond, which was then very high, from a freshet, and which carried him over the dam, where, as he was a very delicate fowl, he was drowned, or his neck was broken, by the great rush and tumble of the water. I have sometimes thought that it might be that he was tired of life, and grieved by the way the world had used him, and so put an end to himself. But I hope it was not so; for, with all his oddities and misfortunes, Jack seemed too sensible for that.