34 8 Next to the Ground 



they cannot come up to her. If a pole is 

 set to lead up to the perch she may go teeter- 

 ing up and down it, clucking and evidently 

 trying to show her late family the way they 

 should also go. Flying comes by nature to 

 a chick. He will stretch his wings and 

 attempt it before he has the sign of a pin- 

 feather, though the pinfeathers start at three 

 days old. But walking up to a height makes 

 his head swim at least until he has mas- 

 tered the art of balancing. He gets on well 

 enough upon the pole until he looks below 

 then he falters, turns to go down, and ends 

 commonly in a fluttering fall. 



A cock is not vain glory's emblem he is 

 vain glory's self. Any court accepting his 

 testimony can easily prove that fine feathers 

 make fine birds. Yet he is not without re- 

 deeming features. The game cock is cour- 

 age made manifest in flesh and feathers. 

 He fights purely from the love of it, when 

 the spirit moves him. A sort of plumed 

 Berserker, he has fits when he must fight or 

 die. Fight and die is perhaps the better 

 phrasing. Oft-times two birds of this tem- 

 per keep battling all day long, stopping only 

 for scant breathing-spells, and at last mak- 

 ing an end of each other. In fighting, the 

 wings are dropped so as to bear hard on the 

 earth, the neck feathers ruffled until the 



