CHANTICLEER 241 



paper, hoping to find in it a practical suggestion 

 for the effectual muzzling of the obnoxious bird. 

 The only improvement which would fall in with 

 such a one's ideas on the subject of cock-crowing 

 would be to improve this kind of natural music 

 out of existence. Naturally the paper would dis- 

 appoint him; he would be grieved at the writer's 

 erroneous views. I hope that his feelings would 

 take no acuter form. I have listened to a person, 

 usually mild-mannered, denouncing a neighbour 

 in the most unmeasured terms for the crime of 

 keeping a crowing cock. If the cock had been 

 a non-crower, a silent member, it would have 

 been different: he would hardly have known that 

 he had a neighbour. There is a very serious, 

 even a sad, side to this question. Mr. Sully main- 

 tains that as civilization progresses, and as we 

 grow more intellectual, all noise, which is pleas- 

 ing to children and savages, and only exhilarates 

 their coarse and juvenile brains, becomes in- 

 creasingly intolerable to us. What unfortunate 

 creatures we then are! We have got our pretty 

 rattle and are now afraid that the noise it makes 

 is going to be the death of us. But what is noise? 

 Will any two highly intellectual beings agree as 



