THE HEADMAN'S JOB 215 



mean health, happiness, or comfort. The strenu- 

 ous life on the farm cannot compare in comfort 

 with the quiet house and the freedom from 

 anxiety of the well-tended hen. The vicissitudes 

 of life are terrible for the uncooped chicken. 

 The occupants of air, earth, and water lie in 

 wait for it. It is fair game for the hawk and 

 the owl ; the fox, the weasel, the rat, the wood 

 pussy, the cat, and the dog are its sworn ene- 

 mies. The horse steps on it, the wheel crushes 

 it ; it falls into the cistern or the swill barrel ; it 

 is drenched by showers or stiffened by frosts, 

 and, as the English say, it has a " rather indiffer- 

 ent time of it." If it survive the summer, and 

 some chickens do, it will roost and shiver on the 

 limb of an apple tree. Its nest will be accessible 

 only to the mink and the rat ; and, like Rachel, 

 it will mourn for its children, which are not. 



No, the well-yarded hen has by all odds the 

 best of it. The wonder is that, with three- 

 fourths of the poultry at large and making its 

 own living, hens still furnish a product, in this 

 country alone, $100,000,000 greater in value than 

 the whole world's output of gold. Our annual 

 production of eggs and poultry foots up to 

 1280,000,000, 14 apiece for every man, woman, 

 and child, and yet people say that hens do 

 not pay ! 



Each flock of forty hens at Four Oaks has a 

 house sixteen feet by twenty, and a run twenty 

 feet by one hundred. I hear no complaints of 



