64 
YANKEE FARMING.-NO. 2. 
chickens last year, and so we had few pullets to 
winter over ; and then comes that pesky owl—Bill!” 
she exclaimed, turning to her oldest son, “ if you 
had a shot him instead o’ them ’ere good for nothin’ 
chipmucks, you’d a done some good—and carries 
off half on ’em o’ready, and two o’ the best o’ our 
yaller hen turkies I ever seed in all my mortal horn 
days. I sot everything by ’em,” said she, wiping 
a tear from her eye, with a corner of her clean 
checked apron. “ If this is to be our luck, Molly, 
I may jest as well quit raisin’ chickens first as 
last, and go to hatchin’ ducks. Oh, Sargeant! I 
heerd Miss Goodell, I mean the Major’s wife, tell 
the most oncommon story ye could ever think on. 
All on us was up there quiltin’ last week, when 
she told us, says she, they had a hen that hatched out 
ducks eggs one year, and when she went down to 
the water with ’em, she was so frightened when 
they swim’d in, about their drownin’, that she waded 
arter ’em, which Miss Goodell seein’, to prevent the 
hen drowin’ in arnest, cotched her out, and sowed 
a piece o’ hog’s bladder to each foot, makin’ it kind 
o’ web fashion ; when in she goes and swims about 
as well as any duck o’ the best on ’em. But the 
strangest thing o’ all was, when she had hatched 
out ducks two years runnin’ they sot heron her own 
eggs agin, and, as soon as they come out, she led 
down the chickens to the water, and ’cause they 
wouldn’t go in like ducks, she takes ’em up one by 
one in her bill, and throws ’em in ; and when she 
seed ’em all drown, one arter another, in she goes 
and would a drownded herself for sorrow, hadn’t they 
run and got her out and shut her up till she forgot 
it and went to layin’ agin.” 
How long Aunt Nabby would have rattled on at 
this rate, I am sure I cannot tell; for as Uncle Sim 
was in the habit of quaintly remarking “ when she 
got a talkin’ in arnest, her tongue was like a log 
rollin’ down hill, there was no stop, till it got to 
the bottom.” But fortunately, the water by this 
time had pretty much all boiled away in the pot 
containing the cooking pumpkin sauce, and it be¬ 
gan to smell as if it were burning, when Mrs. Doo¬ 
little jumped up to fill it from the tea kettle boiling 
by the side for this purpose. So I took the oppor¬ 
tunity, as a sailor would say, of putting in my oar, 
with a talk to the eldest son, and reading the family a 
lesson on the careless manner in which they kept 
their poultry. 
“ Now William,” said I, at the same time pat¬ 
ting the bright-eyed Molly gently on her rosy 
cheek, “ if you had listened to your pretty sister 
here last fall, and built her a poultry house, instead 
of going out squirrel shooting so often, and not 
killing enough to pay for powder and shot, to say 
nothing of the loss of your time 5 you would have 
saved all the hens that have been lost this winter 5 
besides they would have kept so warm and fat, that 
they would have been laying more or less these 
two months past, and you might now have had a 
great number of eggs which would have brought 
three times the price in market that they will a 
month hence. You have not only lost in the poul¬ 
try carried off by the owls and in not getting the 
eggs they would have laid, but also- in the injury 
which they do to the roof of the barn and shed, 
and to the young fruit trees where they roost, as 
well as in their manure, which you know, I sup¬ 
pose, is highly valuable. If it were all saved and 
mixed up with ten times its quantity of muck from 
the swamp, and thus applied to your onion beds, 
you would get one hundred bushels where you 
now raise twenty. Thus you see there would be a 
gain all round, to say nothing of the barns and 
sheds looking so much neater than they now do ; 
and enough would have been made from a poultry 
house, which need cost you only a few days’ work 
and a little refuse timber, not only to purchase your 
sister a new silk dress as your mother and, I dare 
say, she herself desires, but some books also, and a 
summer’s schooling at the village academy; an ad¬ 
vantage she often sighs for, do you not “ my dear,” 
said I, turning round and pressing her hand gently 
in mine. “ Oh, yes, said she, Mr. Teltrue, indeed 
I should 5” for owing to her own refined natural taste 
and the advantages of associating with some young 
ladies of superior education in the village, at Sab¬ 
bath school, her language was free from the dia¬ 
lect of her parents ■ “ and then if I should ever 
come to want, I could myself earn a genteel living 
by teaching, which I am sure would please me 
much better than going to work in a factory, or 
round the neighborhood sewing, although many 
nice girls do so, and deserve credit for it, too, I 
know * but I am sure I should like books better, it 
seems so superior to be taught, and then teach 
again. When a little girl I tried to teach pussy her 
letters, I wanted so much to hear her read.” 
“All right, Molly,” said Uncle Sim, who I ex¬ 
pected would join his son against me, as was gene¬ 
rally the case when I proposed any reforms, espe- 
pecially where books were concerned, “ and you 
shall go to the academy next summer, if you will, 
my darlin’ ; and I’ll take Bill’s gun away from him, 
but you shall have a hen house next fall.” 
“ Massy on me !” shrieked Aunt Nabby, and ran 
up to the side of her husband, and clasped his arm 
with the utmost trepidation. “ Why, what’s the 
matter now, mammy V : said Uncle Sim, with ap¬ 
parent concern, lifting up his spectacles, and throw¬ 
ing down his nearly finished axe helve. “ The 
owl! The owl agin !” Here we all jumped up and 
turned our faces to the kitchen windows, when out 
broke a long hoot, of “ Whoo, whoo, hoo-o-o-o-o” 
of the great horned owl, which I will defy the 
stoutest heart to hear break suddenly upon it on a 
cold winter’s night, without quaking, especially if 
the dolorous bird happens to be answered, as was 
the case this time, with the shrill wail of the 
screech owl. An Indian’s war whoop is scarcely 
more appalling. 
“ Where’s the gun, Bill ? Get the gun, quick, 
and put in a double charge o’ powder, and nine 
buck shot, mind,” said Uncle Sim, shaking his 
arms and hopping about on both feet, something like 
an old cock with his head just cut off. 
“ It’s already loaded, father,” replied the young¬ 
ster, who had that moment taken it down from the 
hooks, where it hung at one endt)f the kitchen, and 
was pecking the flint. “ Hand her here, then,” said 
Uncle Sim. “ Better let me shoot, father,” respond¬ 
ed the lad, “ as I guess I’m the best marksmun and 
most used to it.” But no persuasion would answer 
with Uncle Sim—“ his dander was up,” as he termed 
it—“ he warn’t a goin’ to be hooted at and bullied 
by an owl, not he, and have all his chickens carried 
