CHAPTER VII 



MY OLD FRIEND NICK: A FAILURE IN WHOLE- 

 SALE 



|S might be expected from statements 

 made in the preceding chapters I was 

 no novice in the raising of poultry. 

 Indeed, on one occasion I had gone 

 into poultry-culture in a sort of wholesale way 

 which bid fair to make or break me and my part- 

 ner, and did one or the other thing to both of us, as 

 the story will show. 



It is many years now since my old friend Nick 

 died. A queer, whimsical little chap was Nick. 

 A weazened, crooked, bandy-legged little man 

 of fifty-five or sixty, with a face like that of a little 

 gnome fashioned out of a hickory nut, such as 

 we occasionally see in small stores. His nose was 

 immense, and had acquired a sidewise twist 

 that to follow would keep him traveling in an 

 endless circle (circles are endless come to think 

 of it), while his smile would provoke an answer- 

 ing smile from a graven image. A sparsely grown 

 beard of the color of badly cured salt hay, and of 

 that peculiarly wiry quality of the hair in cheap 



