1895. 



THE AMERICAN BEE-KEEPER. 



249 



AN EGGOTISTsC LAY. 



Of feathc'i-ed creatures usefulest and best 



That treads the earth is the domestic hen. 

 Better each nest of other fowls non est 



Than hers, dowered daily for the good of men. 

 Though luatiu songs of birds with soaring 

 wings 



To fiightj^ souls intense delight afford, 

 Give nie the bird whose lays are solid things 



By every t;"tei'ul epicure encored. 

 To her extempore offerings, rich and sweet, 

 What are the lays of larks— for poets onlj 

 meet? 



I love to hear the scornful village cock 



Challenge, v. ilh scornful cadences, the morn, 

 But more to hear some matron of his lioek 



Cackle in triumph o'er an egg newborn. 

 Hysteric egotist ! \N ith frantic pride 



Her grand achievement to the world she 

 tells, 

 facing the barnyard with impatient stride, 



While every pullet's breast with envy swells 

 Good right hath she her feelings to express, 

 ■Without whose golden gifts the world wer« 

 puddingjess. 



Well may the homestead's feathered Brighau 

 Young 

 Meet her with cockscomb strut and kindling 

 eye; 

 Proud of her chuckling voluntary, sung 



Over the offspring of polygamy. 

 'Tis spotless, pure and full of promise rare. 



Of that beneficence an exponent 

 Which from tlie fowl educes still the fair 



And shapes the issues to mankind's content 

 As sure as eggs are eggs, so sure I am 

 Eggs were a luxury deemed before the days o) 

 Ham. 

 — W. R. Barber in New York Ledger. 



PRICE OF A TRUTH. 



Maxwell Bornard was a niau who dailj 

 and hourly presented himself — all uncon- 

 sciously — to his more cynical friends as a 

 living curiosity by reason of the fact that 

 he was in love witli his wife. It is cer- 

 tainly not a very heinous offense in tlu 

 abstract, even at this end of thenineteeuth 

 century, but in the particuJar set to which 

 Maxwell Bernard belonged it was not con- 

 sidered quite proper to show sucli marJied 

 attention to the woman who belonged tc 

 you. Such things were left for otlier men. 



True, Mrs. Maxwell Bernard was young, 

 accomplislied and lieautiful — beautiful in 

 a calm, statuesque way that rendered hei 

 to the many quite inscrutable. 



There was one man who claimed to 

 know lier secret heart. That man was het 

 husband. Perchame there was anoiiiei 

 who tliouglit he had even a greater right, 

 but tliat is another story. 



Of all the cynic friends who slirugged 



their shoulders and sighed lor a man tiiey 

 deemed jnistaken perhaps tlie one who 

 thought the most of the matter was hon- 

 est, drawling, laughing eyed, indolent Joe 

 Chesney — Joe Chesney, wlio was supposed 

 never to trouble about anything at all, and 

 whose life was apparently one long and 

 badly sustained effort to escape from worry 

 and boredom. But if some of those who 

 claimed to know the indolent one had but 

 scratched below the surface they might 

 have found a warm hearted creature, 

 whose caustic laugh did but hide some 

 better things of which he was half 

 ashamed. But they did not take the trou- 

 ble to scratch, and they did not know or 

 find the lietter man. 



Years ago, before Maxwell Bernard had 

 succeeded unexpectedly to a fortune, and 

 before Joe Chesney, the indolent, had been 

 called to the bar, these two men had been 

 at school tog'^her and had gone together 

 at Oxford, the one filled, even at that time, 

 with a passionate hope that he might solve 

 the great problem called life and make of 

 it a better tiling for himself and others; 

 the other lazily and carelessly adnniring 

 him, but laughing even then, in his boy- 

 ish cynicism, at his friend and at all his 

 friend's airy castles. 



So they kept the old boyish bond intact, 

 having many things in common and a 

 great, unexi.ressed devotion for each other 

 at all times — a devotion that was perhaps 

 weakened on the one side when Bernard 

 married, but which never swerved on the 

 other, for all the careless laughter of the 

 cynic .Joe. 



But a man is most blind to that which 

 most concerns himself and is generally the 

 last to learn of an impending tragedy 

 which o'ershatlpws him. So it was that, 

 while all the world who knew them pitied 

 the man and blamed the wife and whis- 

 peringly coupled the wife's name with the 

 name of another man, Maxwell Bernard 

 knew nothing of it all and lived on in his 

 fool's paradise lilind to all things. 



But Joe Chesney had heard of it, and 

 Joe Chesney, despite his philosophy, was 

 troubled for iiis friend's sake. Joe's phi- 

 losophy had Taught him to look on all men 

 and things li^,htly and to be pleased with 

 their vagaries as a child is pleased with a 

 puppet show. It had taught him, too, a 

 deeper insigh'^ into human character and 

 human weakness. 



"It's not rurjorising, " he murmured to 

 himself when he heard the scandal, tug- 

 ging meditatively at his fair mustache, 

 "she's the sort of woman who would nev- 

 er probe at the depths of poor old Max's 

 character — the sort of brute that Calvert 

 is touches her at once. But I'm sorry for 

 poor old Max. It'll kill him. He's al- 



