RAISING PO UL TR Y. 83 



bag with you or leaving it behind, according as circumstances shall dictate. N. B., 

 I have seen the time when it was eligible and appropriate to leave the sack behind 

 and walk off with considerable velocity, without ever leaving any word where to, 

 send it. 



In the case of the other method mentioned for raising poultry, your friend takes 

 along a covered vessel with a charcoal fire in it, and you carry a long slender, 

 plank. This is a frosty night, understand. Arrived at the tree, or fence, or other 

 hen-roost (your own if you are an idiot), you warm the end of your plank in your 

 friend's fire vessel, and then raise it aloft and ease it up gently against a slumbering 

 chicken's foot. If the subject of your attentions is a true bird, he will infallibly 

 return thanks with a sleepy cluck or two, and step out and take up quarters on thet 

 plank, thus becoming so conspicuously accessory before the fact to his own murder 

 as to make it a grave question in our minds, as it once was in the mind of Black™ 

 stone, whether he is not really and deliberately committing suicide in the second 

 degree. [But you enter into a contemplation of these legal refinements subsequently 

 —not then]. 



When you wish to raise a fine, large, donkey-voiced Shanghai rooster, you do it 

 with a lasso, just as you would a bull. It is because he must be choked, and choked 

 effectually, too. It is the only good, certain way, for whenever he mentions a 

 matter which he is cordially interested in, the chances are ninety-nine in a hundred 



that he secures somebody else's immediate attention to it too, whether it be day or 

 night. 



The Black Spanish is an exceedingly fine bird and a costly one. Thirty-five 

 dollars is the usual figure, and fifty a not uncommon price for a specimen. Even 

 its eggs are worth from a dollar ^ a dollar and a half a-piece, and yet are so 

 unwholesome that the city physician seldom or never orders them for the workhouse. 

 Still I have once or twice procured as high as a dozen at a time for nothing, in the 

 dark of the moon. The best way to raise the Black Spanish fowl is to go late in 

 the evening and raise coop and all. The reason I recommend this method is, that 

 the birds being so valuable, the owners do not permit them to roost around pro- 

 miscuously, but put them in a coop as strong as a fire-proof safe, and keep it in the 

 kitchen at night. The method I speak of is not always a bright and satisfying 



