THE HEADMAN’S JOB 215 
mean health, happiness, or comfort. The strenu- 
ous life on the farm cannot compare in comfort 
with the quiet house and the freedom from 
anxiety of the well-tended hen. The vicissitudes 
of life are terrible for the uncooped chicken, 
The occupants of air, earth, and water lie in 
wait for it. It is fair game for the hawk and 
the owl; the fox, the weasel, the rat, the wood 
pussy, the cat, and the dog are its sworn ene- 
mies. The horse steps on it, the wheel crushes 
it; it falls into the cistern or the swill barrel; it 
is drenched by showers or stiffened by frosts, 
and, as the English say, it has a “ rather indiffer- 
ent time of it.” If it survive the summer, and 
some chickens do, it will roost and shiver on the 
limb of an apple tree. Its nest will be accessible 
only to the mink and the rat; and, like Rachel, 
it will mourn for its children, which are not. 
No, the well-yarded hen has by all odds the 
best of it. The wonder is that, with three- 
fourths of the poultry at large and making its 
own living, hens still furnish a product, in this 
country alone, $100,000,000 greater in value than 
the whole world’s output of gold. Our annual 
production of eggs and poultry foots up to 
$280,000,000, — $4 apiece for every man, woman, 
and child,—-and yet people say that hens do 
not pay ! 
Each flock of forty hens at Four Oaks has a 
house sixteen feet by twenty, and a run twenty 
feet by one hundred. I hear no complaints of 
