IN THE POULTRY YARD. 31 
out—the Plymouth Rocks. He was quite genial and communica- 
tive, and showed me freely over his yards, especially when he 
found that I was not a dealer. He also gave me a history of the 
place and of his connection with it, a condensation of which will 
no doubt interest my readers. 
I learned that the place had not bei onged originally to him, but 
that he had merely adapted the buildings, etc., erected by a former 
owner. ‘This I was glad to hear, as it relieved from the stigma 
of ignorance or stupidity a man who was evidently intelligent 
and well-informed in regard to poultry, and the buildings and ar-’ 
rangements were evidently not those which an experienced poultry 
breeder would ‘have adopted. It seems that a few years previous 
to my visit, the place had belonged to a tailor whose business had 
been just sufficient to give him a subsistence. This man was 
obliged to take, for a trifling debt, a small tract of rather poor 
land, a piece of property which did not add to his income, but, on 
‘the contrary, tended to make him “land-poor,” as the expression 
is. But, by one of those strange turns of fortune (which certainly 
may be called luck) some large manufacturing establishments were 
erected! near it; they extended until the tailor’s property becaine a 
necessity to them, and he was enabled to obtain his own price. 
With the several thousand dollars now in his possession, he looked 
about’for an investment, and as he was disgusted with the tailoring 
business, he determined to go into something else. Like many other 
men, during his days of poverty and struggling he had often turned 
his eyes toward some of the smaller rural pursuits, and chicken rais- 
ing had taken a wonderful hold of his fancy. He already had a few 
dozen fowls, from which he derived great comfort and profit, and the 
_golden promises which the possession of a few ‘housand of such 
money-producers seemed to lay before him, had often formed the sub- 
ject of his day dreams, and had frequentiy consoled him in days of 
dark adversity. No wonder, then, that when his barren acres had 
been converted into golden nuggets he thought he saw an oppor- 
tunity for the realization of all his hopes. Four acres of land on 
the outskirts of his village happened to be offered for sale at a 
very low figure; he bought them and erected the extensive glass 
