I can see now the crude coops I used to make by driving sharp 

 stakes in the ground .alongside of the garden fence and making little 

 pens about three feet square in each of which was a nest box and each 

 covered with a shabby clapboard roof. As the hens became broody I 

 tried them out in their respective coops and if they "set" would place 

 the .eggs under them late in the evening. I tell you life was pretty full 

 for a boy when these hens began to hatch out the most beautiful fluffy 

 chicks and they had their first feed. Soon they would run outside 

 through the slatted front, out into the wide, wide world. With what 

 fatherly pride a boy watches the little ones scamper here and there in 

 search of insect life. .One can sit for hours and watch them scurry and 

 scratch and flop their little wings. They have no lessons to learn, no 

 dead language to deaden their animal spirits, but joy of existence is 

 complete. Their lifework is already laid out and they accept it gladly. 



Once the mother of fourteen new hatched chicks died and they 

 were left orphans. My boyish ingenuity was exercised to know how 

 to take care of such a helpless family. With the help of my mother I 

 made a brooder with felt strips hanging down for the little ones to 

 nestle in. It was not long before they accepted this for their home 

 after being shut in between their first feeds. Soon they looked upon 

 me as their foster mother. To this day I can remember nothing that 

 gave me more pleasure than this motherless brood of chicks. They 

 followed me all around the farm just as if I were the hen. I clucked 

 to them and kept them together on our rambles after insects. They 

 knew my call when I caught a grasshopper or cricket for them. How 

 they would fall over each other trying to get to my hand first. They 

 would follow me out through the fields and be ready to jump for the 

 worms and bugs as I turned over each little board or clod. 



They would eat crickets and grasshoppers best of all. Some bugs 

 they did not like, especially beetles. I soon learned which "game" 

 they liked best and what fun it was to fill them up and see them grow. 

 One day a rain came up suddenly and one became lost before I could 

 get them all in. When I found it it was half drowned. I took it in 

 to the fire and tried to revive it, but it peeped and peeped such a 

 pitiful little cry that my heart ached, and in spite of care it died. To 

 my boyish mind it seemed like one of my own children, and I cried 

 myself to sleep. Next morning my sister and I had a solemn funeral 

 back behind the old woodshed. There we made a little grave and 

 placed the dead chick in a little wooden box for a coffin and buried it 

 with tears in our eyes. 



The balance of this brood grew up to market size and always kept 

 together and followed me all that summer all over the farm. I remem- 

 ber I was very busy in a big field along the highway one day turning 

 over clods and chasing hoppers for the brood when some people passed 

 by and stopped to see the hen boy with his brood of half grown chicks. 

 They called me over to the road with my brood and marveled at the 

 sight. To my boyish imagination this was a great honor, and to this 

 day I remember the pride I had for that brood of chicks. 



One of the keenest pleasures of my boyhood days on that old 

 Indiana farm was hunting eggs. The boy that has never hunted eggs 

 on a real old farm with barns, and sheds, and straw stacks, and hay 

 fields of timothy and clover has missed a great treat. 



10 



