A Guest at the Ludlow, and Other Stories by Bill Nye (ereader ebook TXT) 📖
- Author: Bill Nye
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To speak tersely of the hen and her mission in life seems to me almost sacrilege. It[Pg 101] is at least in poor taste. The hen and her works lie near to every true heart. She does much toward making us better, and she doesn't care who knows it, either. Young chicks who have lost their mothers by death, and whose fathers are of a shiftless and improvident nature, may be fed on kumiss, two parts; moxie, eight parts; distilled water, ten parts. Mix and administer till relief is obtained. Sometimes, however, a guinea hen will provide for the young chicken, and many lives have been saved in this way. Whether or not this plan will influence the voice of the rising hen is a question among henologists of the country which I shall not attempt to answer.
Hens who steal their nests are generally of a secretive nature and are more or less social pariahs. A hen who will do this should be watched at all times and won back by kind words from the step she is about to take. Brute force will accomplish little. Logic also does not avail. You should endeavor to influence her by showing her that it is honorable at all times to lay a good egg, and that[Pg 102] as soon as she begins to be secretive and to seek to mislead those who know and love her, she takes a course which can not end with honor to herself or her descendants.
I have made the hen a study for many years, and love to watch her even yet as she resumes her toils on a falling market year after year, or seeks to hatch out a summer hotel by setting on a door knob. She interests and pleases me. Careful study of the hen convinces me that her low, retreating forehead is a true index to her limited reasoning faculties and lack of memory, ideality, imagination, calculation and spirituality. She is also deficient in her enjoyment of humor.
I once owned a large white draught rooster, who stood about seven hands high, and had feet on him that would readily break down a whole corn-field if he walked through it. Yet he lacked the courage of his convictions, and socially was not a success. Leading hens regarded him as a good-hearted rooster, and seemed to wonder that he did not get on better in a social way. He had a rich baritone[Pg 103] voice, and was a good provider, digging up large areas of garden, and giving the hens what was left after he got through, and yet they gave their smiles to far more dissolute though perhaps brighter minds. So I took him away awhile, and let him see something of the world by allowing him to visit among the neighbors, and go into society a little. Then I brought him home again, and one night colored him with diamond dyes so that he was a beautiful scarlet. His name was Sumner.
I took Sumner the following morning and turned him loose among his old neighbors. Surprise was written on every face. He realized his advantage, and the first thing he did was to greet the astonished crowd with a gutteral remark, which made them jump. He then stepped over to a hated rival, and ate off about fifteen cents' worth of his large, red, pompadour comb. He now remarked in a courteous way to a small Poland-China hen, who seemed to be at the head of all works of social improvement, that we were having rather a backward spring. Then he picked[Pg 104] out the eye of another rival, much to his surprise, and went on with the conversation. By noon the bright scarlet rooster owned the town. Those who had picked on him before had now gone to the hospital, and practically the social world was his. He got so stuck up that he crowed whenever the conversation lagged, and was too proud to eat a worm that was not right off the ice. I never saw prosperity knock the sense out of a rooster so soon. He lost my sympathy at once, and I resolved to let him carve out his own career as best he might.
Gradually his tail feathers grew gray and faded, but he wore his head high. He was arrogant and made the hens go worming for his breakfast by daylight. Then he would get mad at the food and be real hateful and step on the little chickens with his great big feet.
But as his new feathers began to come in folks got on to him, as Matthew Arnold has it, and the other roosters began to brighten up and also blow up their biceps muscles.
He looked up sadly at me with his one eye as who should say, "Have you got any more of that there red paint left?" (Page 105)
One day he was especially mean at break[Pg 105]fast. A large fat worm, brought to him by the flower of his harem, had a slight gamey flavor, he seemed to think, and so he got mad and bit several chickens with his great coarse beak and stepped on some more and made a perfect show of himself.
At this moment a small bantam wearing one eye still in mourning danced up and kicked Sumner's eye out. Then another rival knocked the stuffing for a whole sofa pillow out of Sumner, and retired. By this time the surprised and gratified hens stepped back and gave the boys a chance. The bantam now put on his trim little telegraph climbers and, going up Mr. Sumner's powerful frame at about four jumps, he put in some repairs on the giant's features, presented his bill, and returned. By nine o'clock Sumner didn't have features enough left for a Sunday paper. He looked as if he had been through the elevated station at City Hall and Brooklyn bridge. He looked up sadly at me with his one eye as who should say, "Have you got any more of that there red paint left?" But I shook my head at him and he went[Pg 106] away into a little patch of catnip and stayed there four days. After that you could get that rooster to do anything for you—except lay. He was gentle to a fault. He would run errands for those hens and turn an icecream freezer for them all day on lawn festival days while others were gay. He never murmured nor repined. He was kind to the little chickens and often spoke to them about the general advantages of humility.
After many years of usefulness Sumner one day thoughtlessly ate the remains of a salt mackerel, and pulling the drapery of his couch about him he lay down to pleasant dreams, and life's fitful fever was over. His remains were given to a poor family in whom I take a great interest, frequently giving them many things for which I have no especial use.
This should teach us that some people can not stand prosperity, but need a little sorrow, ever and anon, to teach them where they belong. And, oh! how the great world smiles when a rooster, who has owned the ranch for a year or so, and made himself odious, gets[Pg 107] spread out over the United States by a smaller one with less voice.
The study of the fowl is filled with interest. Of late years I keep fowls instead of a garden. Formerly my neighbors kept fowls and I kept the garden.
It is better as it is.
Mertie Kersykes, Whatcom, Washington, writes as follows: "Dear Mr. Nye, does pugilists ever reform? They are so much brought into Contax with course natures that I do not see how they can ever, ever become good lives or become professors of religion. Do you know if such is the case to the best of your knowledge, and answeer Soon as convenient, and so no more at Present."[Pg 108]
AS A CANDIDATE XIIThe heat and venom of each political campaign bring back to my mind with wonderful clearness the bitter and acrimonious war, and the savage factional fight, which characterized my own legislative candidacy in what was called the Prairie Dog District of Wyoming, about ten years ago. This district was known far and wide as the battleground of the territory, and generally when the sun went down on the eve of election day the ground had that disheveled and torn-up appearance peculiar to the grave of Brigham Young the next day after his aggregated widow has held her regular annual sob recital and scalding-tear festival.
I hesitated about accepting the nomination because I knew that Vituperation would get up on its hind feet and annoy me greatly,[Pg 109] and I had reason to believe that no pains would be spared on the part of the management of the opposition to make my existence a perfect bore. This turned out to be the case, and although I was nominated in a way that seemed to indicate perfect harmony, it was not a week before the opposition organ, to which I had frequently loaned print paper when it could not get its own C. O. D. paper out of the express office, said as follows in a startled and double-leaded tone of voice:
"HUMILIATING DISCLOSURE."The candidate for assembly in this district, whose trans-Missouri name seems to be Nye, turns out to be the same man who left Penobscot county, Maine, in the dark of the moon four years ago. Mr. Nye's disappearance was so mysterious that prominent Penobscoters, especially the sheriff, offered a large reward for his person. It was afterwards learned that he was kidnapped and taken across the Canadian line by a high-[Pg 110]spirited and high-stepping horse valued at $1,300. Mr. Nye's candidacy for the high office to which he aspires has brought him into such prominence that at the mass meeting held last evening in Jimmy Avery's barber-shop, he was recognized at once by a Maine man while making a telling speech in favor of putting in a stone culvert at the draw above Mandel's ranch. The man from Maine, who is visiting our thriving little town with a view to locating here and establishing an agency for his world-renowned rock-alum axe-helves, says that Mr. Nye, in the hurry and rush incident to his departure for Canada, overlooked his wife and seven little ones. He also says that the candidate's boasted liberality here is different from the kind he was using while in Maine, and quotes the following incident: Two years before he went away from Penobscot county, one of our present candidate's children was playing on the railroad track of the Bangor & Moosehead Lake Railroad, when suddenly there was a wild shriek of the iron-horse, a timid, scared cry of the child, and the rushing train was upon[Pg 111] it. Spectators turned away in horror. The air was heavy, and the sun seemed to stop its shining. Slowly the long freight train, loaded with its rich freight of huckleberries, came to a halt. A glad cry went up from the assembly as the broad-shouldered engineer came out of the tall grass with the crowing child in his arms. Then cheer on cheer rent the air, and in the midst of it all, Mr. Nye appeared. He was told of the circumstance, and, as he wrung the hand of the engineer, tears stood in his eyes. Then, reaching in his pocket, he drew forth a card, and writing his autograph on it, he gave it to the astounded engineer, telling him to use it wisely and not fritter it away. 'But are you not robbing yourself?' exclaimed the astonished and delighted engineer. 'No, oh no,' said the munificent parent, 'I have others left.' And this is the man who asks our suffrages! Will you vote for him or for Alick Meyerdinger, the purest one-legged man that ever rapped with his honest knuckles on top of a bar and asked the boys to put a name to it."[Pg 112]
I was pained to read this, for I had not at that time toyed much with politics, but I went up
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