The next pet which I remember to have had was a handsome cockerel, as gay and gallant a fellow as ever scratched up seed-corn, or garden-seeds, for the young pullets.
Sam was a foundling; that is, he was cast off by an unnatural mother, who, from the time he was hatched, refused to own him. In this sad condition my father found him, and brought him to me. I took and put him in a basket of wool, where I kept him most of the time, for a week or two, feeding him regularly and taking excellent care of him. He grew and thrived, and finally became a great house-pet and favorite. My father was especially amused by him, but my mother, I am sorry to say, always considered him rather troublesome, or, as she remarked, “more plague than profit.” Now I think of it, it must have been rather trying to have had him pecking at a nice loaf of bread, when it was set down before the fire to raise, and I don’t suppose that the print of his feet made the prettiest sort of a stamp for cookies and pie-crust.
Sam was intelligent, very. I think I never saw a fowl turn up his eye with such a cunning expression after a piece of mischief. He showed such a real affection for me, that I grew excessively fond of him. But ah, I was more fond than wise! Under my doting care, he never learnt to roost like other chickens. I feared that something dreadful might happen to him if he went up into a high tree to sleep; so when he grew too large to lie in his basket of wool, I used to stow him away very snugly in a leg of an old pair of pantaloons, and lay him in a warm place under a corner of the wood-house. In the morning I had always to take him out; and as I was not, I regret to say, a very early riser, the poor fellow never saw daylight till two or three hours after all the other cocks in the neighbourhood were up and crowing.
After Sam was full-grown, and had a “coat of many colors” and a tail of gay feathers, it was really very odd and laughable to see how every evening, just at sundown, he would leave all the other fowls with whom he had strutted and crowed and fought all day, and come meekly to me, to be put to bed in the old pantaloons.
But one morning, one sad, dark morning, I found him strangely still when I went to release him from his nightly confinement. He did not flutter, nor give a sort of smothered crow, as he usually did. The leg of which I took hold to pull him out, seemed very cold and stiff. Alas, he had but one leg! Alas, he had no head at all! My poor Sam had been murdered and partly devoured by a cruel rat some time in the night!
I took the mangled body into the house, and sat down in a corner with it in my lap, and cried over it for a long time. It may seem very odd and ridiculous, but I really grieved for my dead pet; for I believed he had loved and respected me as much as it is in a cockerel’s heart to love and respect any one. I knew I had loved him, and I reproached myself bitterly for never having allowed him to learn to roost.
At last, my brothers came to me, and very kindly and gently persuaded me to let Sam be buried out of my sight. They dug a little grave under the elm-tree, by the side of Keturah, laid the body down, wrapped in a large cabbage-leaf, filled in the earth, and turfed over the place. My brother Rufus, who knew a little Latin, printed on a shingle the words, “Hic jacet Samuelus,”—which mean, Here lies Sam,—and placed it above where the head of the unfortunate fowl should have been.
I missed this pet very much; indeed, every body missed him after he was gone, and even now I cannot laugh heartily when I think of the morning when I found him dead.
A short time after this mournful event, my brother Rufus, who was something of a poet, wrote some lines for me, which he called a “Lament.” This I then thought a very affecting, sweet, and consoling poem, but I have since been inclined to think that my brother was making sport of me and my feelings all the time. I found this same “Lament” the other day among some old papers, and as it is quite a curiosity, I will let you see it:—