CROPS AND PROFITS 



to my breakfast, or a delicate grilled fowl to 

 my dinner— and the feathered people take a 

 new lease of life. They give a social, hab- 

 itable air, moreover, to a country dwelling. 

 The contented, good-humored cluck of the 

 hens, breeds contentment in the onlooker. 

 They are rare philosophers, taking the world 

 as they find it; — now a blade of grass, now a 

 lurking worm; here a stray kernel of grain, 

 and there some tid-bit of a butterfly; taking 

 their siesta with a wing and a leg stretched out 

 in the sun, and like the rest of us, warning 

 away from their own feeding ground, birds 

 less strong than themselves, with an authori- 

 tative dab of their bills. Although amenable 

 to laws of habit, — traversing regular beats 

 for their supply of wild food, and collecting 

 at regular hours for such as the mistress may 

 have to bestow, they are yet rebellious against 

 undue or extraordinary show of authority. 

 It is quite impossible to exercise any safe con- 

 trol over the locality where the hens choose to 

 execute their maternal duties. They insist 

 upon freedom of the will in the matter, as 

 obstreperously, and, I dare say, as logically, 

 as ever any old-school dialectician in his meta- 

 physical homilies. 



Nothing could be more charming than the 



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