348 Next to the Ground 



they cannot come up to her. If a pole is 

 set to lead up to the perch she may go teeter- 

 ing up and down it, clucking and evidently 

 trying to show her late family the way they 

 should also go. Flying comes by nature to 

 a chick. He will stretch his wings and 

 attempt it before he has the sign of a pin- 

 feather, though the pinfeathers start at three 

 days old. But walking up to a height makes 

 his head swim — at least until he has mas- 

 tered the art of balancing. He gets on well 

 enough upon the pole until he looks below — 

 then he falters, turns to go down, and ends 

 commonly in a fluttering fall. 



A cock is not vain glory's emblem — he is 

 vain glory's self. Any court accepting his 

 testimony can easily prove that fine feathers 

 make fine birds. Yet he is not without re- 

 deeming features. The game cock is cour- 

 age made manifest in flesh and feathers. 

 He fights purely from the love of it, when 

 the spirit moves him. A sort of plumed 

 Berserker, he has fits when he must fight or 

 die. Fight and die is perhaps the better 

 phrasing. Oft-times two birds of this tem- 

 per keep battling all day long, stopping only 

 for scant breathing-spells, and at last mak- 

 ing an end of each other. In fighting, the 

 wings are dropped so as to bear hard on the 

 earth, the neck feathers ruffled until the 



