120 THE HISTORY 0? 



These were the gentleman's own expressive words. He 

 added that he could stand afiything in the hen-trade but 

 this. This, however, he would not submit to. Bumhgjn 

 "should be kicked out of that Committee, or he would kick 

 himself out of his boots, and the Society's traces also ; -r— a 

 threat which did not seem to alarm or disturb anybody, " as 

 I knows on," except this same tall, stout, athletic, 'brave, 

 honorable, honest, truthful, smart, gentlemanly member of 

 this Mutual Admiration Society ! 



Now, it was very wgU known, at this time, that the Com- 

 mittee of Judges had been chosen entirely without 'their Own 

 knowledge. So far as I was myself concerned, I should 

 greatly have preferred at that time to have remained an out- 

 sider, because it would have then been quite as well for me 

 to have contributed to the exhibition, where, with the 

 " splendid specimens '"' I then possessed of the Cochin- China 

 and Shanghae varieties of fowl, I could have knocked all 

 the others " higher than a fence " in t/iat show, as I had 

 done in all the previous exhibitions where I had ever com- 

 peted with the boys. 



But the same power which had formed the Committee of 

 Judges also provided that they must not be competitors. 

 Thus, three or four of those persons who had at the pre- 

 vious exhibitions of this Society been the most extensive 

 contributors, — men who had bred by far the largest assort- 

 ments and quanUties of good fowls up to this period, and 



