127 



Steps from home. He never knows 

 enough to turn a corner. All his intelli- 

 gence is like light, moving only in 

 straight lines. He is impetuous and 

 timid, and has not the smallest presence 

 of mind or sagacity to discern between 

 friend and foe. He has no confidence in 

 any earthly power that does not reside in 

 an old hen. Her cluck will be followed to 

 the last ditch, and to nothing else will he 

 give heed. 



I am afraid that the Interpreter was 

 putting almost too fine a point upon it, 

 when he had Christiana and her children 

 into another room where was a hen and 

 chickens, and bid them observe awhile. 

 So one of the chickens went to a trough 

 to drink, and every time she drank she 

 lifted up her head and her eyes toward 

 heaven. 'See,' said he, 'what this little 

 chick doth, and learn of her to acknowl- 

 edge whence your mercies come, by re- 

 ceiving them with looking up.' 



Doubtless the chick lifts her eyes 

 toward heaven, but a close acquaintance 

 with the race would put anything but ac- 

 knowledgment in the act. A gratitude 

 that thanks heaven for favors received, 

 and then runs into a hole to prevent any 

 other person from sharing the benefit of 

 these favors, is a very questionable kind 

 of gratitude, and certainly should be con- 

 fined to the bipeds that wear feathers. 



Yet if you take away selfishness from 

 a chicken's moral make-up, and fatuity 

 from his intellectual, you have a very 

 chaming creature left. For, apart from 

 their excessive greed, chickens seem to 

 be affectionate. They have sweet, social 

 ways. 



They huddle together with fond, cares- 

 sing chatter, and chirp soft lullabies. 

 Their toilet performances are full of in- 

 terest. They trim each other's bills with 

 great thoroughness and dexterity, much 

 better, indeed, than they dress their own 

 heads, for their bungling, awkward little 

 claws make sad work of it. 



It is as much as they can do to stand 

 on two feet, and they naturally make sev- 

 eral revolutions when they attempt to 

 stand on one. Nothing can be more lu- 

 dicrous than their early efforts to walk. 

 They do not really walk. They sight their 

 object, waver, balance, decide, and then 



tumble forward, stopping all in a heap as 

 soon as the original impetus is lost — gen- 

 erally some way ahead of the place to 

 which they wished to go. 



It is delightful to watch them as drowsi- 

 ness films their round, bright, black eyes, 

 and the dear old mother croons them 

 under her ample wings, and they nestle in 

 perfect harmony. How they manage to 

 bestow themselves with such limited ac- 

 commodations, or how they manage to 

 breathe in a room so close, it is difficult 

 to imagine. They certainly deal a stag- 

 gering blow to our preconceived notions 

 of the necessity of oxygen and ventilation, 

 but they make it easy to see whence the 

 Germans derived their fashion of sleep- 

 ing under feather beds. But breathe and 

 bestow themselves they do. The deep 

 mother breast and the broad mother 

 wings take them all in. 



They penetrate her feathers, and open 

 for themselves unseen little doors into 

 the mysterious, brooding, beckoning dark- 

 ness. But it is long before they can ar- 

 range themselves satisfactorily. They 

 chirp, and stir, and snuggle, trying to 

 find the softest and warmest nook. Now, 

 an uneasy head is thrust out, and now a 

 whole tiny body ; but it soon re-enters in 

 another quarter, and at length the stir and 

 chirrp grows still. You see only a collec- 

 tion of little legs, as if the hen were a 

 banyan tree, and presently even they dis- 

 appear. She settles down comfortably 

 and all are wrapped in a slumberous si- 

 lence. 



And as I sit by the hour, watching their 

 winning ways, and see all the steps of this 

 sleepy subsidence, I can but remember 

 that outburst of love and sorrow from the 

 lips of Him who, though He came to 

 earth from a dwelling place of ineffable 

 glory, called nothing unclean because it 

 was common, found no homely detail too 

 homely or too trivial to illustrate the 

 Father's love ; but from the birds of the 

 air, the fish of the sea, the lilies of the 

 field, the stones in the street, the foxes 

 in their holes, the patch on the coat, the 

 oxen in the furrow, the sheep in the pit, 

 the camel under his burden, drew lessons 

 of divine pity and patience, of heavenly 

 duty and delight." 



