WHAT IS A FRESH EGG? 51 



restaurant is the fact that the proprietor has been 

 fooled many times. As they have put it, "people 

 start well, and for a time keep up the quantity, and 

 the quality is all right, but when the stringent time 

 of year comes they fall down as to quantity, and a 

 little later they have evidently been tempted to keep 

 up the quantity by gathering eggs from other sources 

 than their own, and then we meet with the question- 

 able pleasure of having a patron at our tables return 

 to us an egg just ready to hatch." 



When one seeks private trade for the output of his 

 hennery it is possible to obtain extreme prices, pro- 

 vided the buyers can be convinced of the absolutely 

 high quality of what they are purchasing. 



In New York, last year, for a few weeks, a man, 

 gotten up as a veritable " hay-seed " farmer, sold eggs 

 from house to house through the streets running 

 from 4Sth to 65th, in large quantities. They were 

 all marked in red ink with the date on which they 

 were said to be laid. 



He did not last very long, and his liberty was cur- 

 tailed, and for some time he graced one of the free 

 institutions where iron bars obstruct the view of the 

 surrounding country. It developed that this enter- 

 prising crook was buying the culls from cold storage 

 houses, and, in a basement on 43d Street near the 

 North River, he had eight girls steadily at work mark- 

 ing the alleged dates when these eggs were laid. 



The difficulty seems to be that when you reach the 



