March, rgrI 
A find 
The photographer, who wanted to get representations 
of these fluffy little folk became quite intimately acquainted 
with them, and: was a firm believer in their intelligence; 
more so than the farmer, who was always too busy to study 
the individuality of his stock, and who, indeed, scoffed at 
the idea of chicks possessing any personality at all. 
“Oh, they don’t amount to much,” he remarked, mean- 
ing, of course, in intelligence, while he cast a calculating eye 
over the latest brood, an eye which took on itself an expres- 
sion of approval of the economic sort, as he added, ‘“‘but 
they soon grow into money and make good table-birds.”’ 
The fight 
Table-birds, after the claims made, of individuality! 
What a drop to the very material! That barbarous expres- 
sion ‘“‘table-birds’”” made the photographer feel a perfect 
cannibal and conjured up such a picture to her mind, that she 
shut her tripod, packed away her camera and returned 
home full of vegetarian ideas. 
However, the camera is a hard task master, and whether 
those delightful, fluffy little folk were to make table-birds 
in the future or not, their fate was to be photographed in 
the present, and it must be the immediate present, too, for 
A long drink 
days aged them like years, and the charm of the fluff-ball 
is very fleeting and soon disappears with the growth of legs 
and feathers. There is no time to waste, as enough time 
goes in watching, for in continual watching lies the only 
chance of success for a photograph. Indeed, it is almost 
a case of “watch and pray,” for the poor photographer 
often found herself praying to these little balls of quick- 
silver to consider the camera. “Oh, do, do just keep like 
that for one second,” she would beg, or “Pray, pray, don’t 
scurry so continually,’ or again, “If you only wouldn’t 
persist in getting so behind one another,” etc. And the 
little chicks would look up and blink their small impudent 
eyes, as much as to say, “Don’t you wish you might get us?” 
And sometimes—well to tel] the truth, rather often—they 
so exasperated the exhausted photographer, that she be- 
AMERICAN HOMES AND 
GARDENS 99 
The early bird 
came hardhearted and callous enough to shout at them, 
‘“Table-birds! that’s what you are, table-birds!’’ But it 
never quite came to that. 
Among this particular brood was one who was darker 
than the rest, rather smaller, and which seemed to possess 
an energy and a whimsical humor all her own. She was 
always so busy enjoying her life, and whatever she did was 
with gusto, from getting the warmest and dryest corner of 
the foster mother, to mixing in an infantile fight. 
These almost hourly fights were a surprise to the 
photographer. Such a short time out of the infinite, and 
The Tragedy 
yet already falling a prey to angry passions; but develop- 
ment goes forward at such motor pace in a chick that the 
one, only out of his own egg about half an hour, will watch 
his brother emerging from his with such a superior expres- 
sion of mild curiosity, as much as to say, ‘““What a very 
odd and undignified proceeding!” 
In spite of the habit the chicks have of defying one’s 
efforts to picture them at critical moments, my camera has 
rendered certain general points of agreement with their ap- 
pearances to our sight; but how would these little imps 
The Reward 
appear in passing before the latest processes of photog- 
raphy that repeat animal activities so as to present entirely 
different aspects,—those that for instance are caught neither 
by the artist or the spectator, because hand and eye cannot 
work at minimum mechanical speeds of one-thousandths of a 
second. 
It is a pity that the charm of chicks is so short lived. 
The photographer felt this badly, as she saw her brood 
grow into ordinary lanky creatures with smooth heads and 
long legs; and before she parted from them, she was able 
to listen to the farmer with equanimity, and even smile at 
the expression “‘table-birds.”” When she visits them again, 
she hopes to find her little favorite dark one a plump hen, 
with perhaps, a little family of her own, but she will never 
believe any other brood could be as entertaining as this. 
