HUNTING, AND mDING TO liOU:^DS. 45 



is really the truth that the male bird is the onhj 

 cliovlster who sings, the female pr/vy^a donna on the 

 Opera stage being the only licu^ as in the case of 

 '^ Desdemona," who sings on the very eve of 

 personal demise or nimxler. 



To me there is a poetic side of the question in all 

 the strife and contention of life, in the battles of 

 game-cocks, the boxing encounters of the athlete, 

 the accomplishments of adversaries in war, and the 

 use of weapons. The game-cock, that knows no 

 surrender but in death, and Avho fights of his own 

 free will and for the love of battle, so long as an 

 adversary is before him, but who, in his moments of 

 peace, will receive under the feathers of his broad 

 and heroic breast the tiny newly -hat died chickens, 

 and, however hungry himself, will call to his hens 

 and gracefully step back from the last barleycorn 

 left in the yard to their general acceptance. Even 

 in the boxing-match there is poetry. It is poetic 

 to see the comparatively slender form of the gentle- 

 man reduce the coarse and monstrous ruffian by 

 tact and skill to a mere harmless animal, and 

 that by the use of appliances usually assigned alone 

 to brute or muscular force. Wherever genius 

 triumphs, the poetic power is not fiir off. Thank 



