A fly buzzed forward with impulsive haste, and spoke with a little rasping voice:
“We flies are small; but we are mighty. We remove mountains of dirt for uncleanly men, and how do they reward us? They catch us in traps and drown us with boiling water. They snare our feet with treacherous fly-papers, and after laughing at our struggles to get free, burn us without mercy. Small boys torture us with pins, or pull off legs and wings for what they call ‘fun.’ If they do not want us about them, why do they make the filth which necessitates our presence? That is a conundrum beyond my solving. I leave it for this wise assembly to answer.”
The fly buzzed back to a sunny spot, and an unwieldy hog ambled forward.
“‘As greedy as a hog.’ ‘As lazy as a pig.’ ‘As fat as a pig.’ ‘No more sense than a hog.’ Have you never heard such expressions as these fall from the lips of men? They shut us up in little dirty pens where we must needs be lazy, since we cannot run about. They continually tempt us with food, and the more we eat the better they like it, since it produces the fat which they afterwards deride. If we weary of dry corn or thin slop, and break through some convenient hole which their own carelessness has left, and help ourselves to the tender cabbages and peas of their gardens, they chase us with yells and sticks and stones, and send their dogs to make devilled ham of us before we are dead.”
His pun so amused the assembly that they were convulsed with laughter. After vainly waiting several minutes for silence the hog returned calmly to his place, convinced that he had at least presented his grievances in a striking manner.
A handsome black Spanish rooster strutted forward to the platform, and stretching his neck, called the audience to order with his clear-toned
“How-do-you-do? I am the ‘Cock-o’-the-walk,’” he explained, “a term which men are pleased to borrow and apply to themselves. They rely upon me to give them warning of the approach of day, and then grumble because I disturb their slumbers. How can they expect to wake up without having their slumbers disturbed? That’s what I would like to know. They rely upon me to eat the worms and bugs and grasshoppers that destroy their gardens, and then chase me with stones and dogs when they find me in their gardens doing my duty.
“They pen me up, often for days at a time, with insufficient food and water, and do not even deign an apology for their neglect.
“My wives supply numerous eggs for men’s food, yet they wring our necks without mercy if we venture to eat an egg ourselves when they have forgotten to feed us. ‘As full as an egg is of meat,’ is a comparison which might properly be balanced with ‘As full as a man is of inconsistency.’
“If men would attend to their business and scratch for a living as I do, the world would be a far better place than it is today.”