CHAPTER XI. 



PROGRESS OF THE MALADY. 



Immediately after this second exhibition, the sales of 

 poultry largely increased. Everybody had now got fairly 

 under weigh in the hen-trade ; and in every town, at every 

 corner, the pedestrian tuinbled over either a fowl-raiser or 

 some huge specimen of unnameable monster in chicken 

 shape. 



I had been busy, and had added largely to my " supe- 

 rior " stock of " pure-blooded " birds, by importations from 

 Calcutta, Hong-Kong, Canton and Shanghae, direct. In 

 two instances I sent out for them expressly, and in two 

 or three other instances I had obtained them directly from 

 on shipboard, as vessels arrived into Boston and New York 

 harbors. 



I was then an officer in the Boston Custom-house, — a ' 

 democrat under a whig collector, — otherwise, a live skinned 

 eel in a hot frying-pan. But I found that my business had 

 got to be such that I could not fulfil my duty to Uncle 

 Sam and attend appropriately to what had now got to be 

 6* 



