FANCIERS’ JOURNAL AND POULTRY EXCHANGE. 
579 
PoUlJR^Y DE[=^F\JIVIEfij. 
MOTHER HEN’S ADVICE ZZTZZ ^ 
“ Oh, dear ! oh, dear !” cried a foolish hen 
With a pair of baby chickens, 
“ My fate is hard ; not a fowl in ten 
Knows how my poor heart sickens. 
For it’s scrape and scrape, and scratch and scratch, 
To feed these hungry bills ; 
How I wish there were no eggs to hatch — 
My life is full of ills.” 
“ 0-ood neighbor mine,” said a stately dame 
That slowly wandered by, 
And her brood of ten behind her came — 
“ You pining here ? Olio! 
Although my chicks are larger, still 
I manage to provide ; 
For a cheerful heart and an earnest will 
Are fighting on my side.” 
“ Ah, yes 1 it’s well for those to preach 
Whose skies are bright and blue ; 
Good fortune some can always reach, 
Dark days they never knew. 
If I only had myself to keep 
I never more should fret; 
But it’s toil and care till I go to sleep, 
I’ve babies — you forget.” 
“ Yes, that’s the world,” then the dame replied, 
“ Most people see their labors, 
Their cares and trials magnified, 
And greater than their neighbor’s. 
If our daily toil, good sister, here, 
With cheerfulness we do ; 
It’s as easy, love, to scratch for ten 
As it is to scratch for two !” — Selected. 
(For Fanciers’ Journal.) 
CROTCHETS OF THE POULTRY FANCY. 
By Peter Simple. 
No. 5. 
“ I have so great, a contempt and detestation for meanness, that I could 
sooner make a friend of one who had committed murder, than of a man 
who could be capable, in any instance, of the former vice. Under mean- 
ness, I comprehend dishonesty; under dishonesty, ingratitude; under 
ingratitude, irreligion ; and under this latter, every species of vice and 
immorality in human nature .” — Laurence Sterne. 
I looked in upon the convention of chicken-savans at the 
recent New York meeting, and found them a very respect- 
able body of men. After listening to the spunky debate 
some hours each day I made up my mind that there were at 
least half a dozen of the gentlemen then and there present 
who were “ smart,” in the best acceptation of this common- 
place term. But I could hardly single out a speaker who 
did not either admit it or seem to have an axe to grind , di- 
rectly or indirectly ; and this furnishes me with a good 
theme for my present paper, in the series I am writing about 
the crotchets of our poultry fanciers. 
How common the expression of late among contributors, 
“1 have no axe to grind !” And yet, perhaps unwittingly, 
all these writers have the handle of their “ little hatchet " 
concealed in their sleeve, and are really bent upon keeping 
its edge very keen in every movement they undertake. 
Some of them honestly confess the fact. But there are others 
who dodge the soft impeachment, and imagine that the in- 
nocent axe they propose covertly to grind cannot be dis- 
covered, while they are so skilfully manipulating their grind- 
stone-turning process. 
One of your Western correspondents, for example, de- 
sires to see the men who have an axe to grind make their 
appearance at the front, and show their hand. He wants 
everybody to be “up with the times,” and ignores the old 
fogies “who bred, exported, and imported fowls twenty 
years ago, and who then wrote books about them.” They 
must now take a back seat, he thinks. He has no “ axe to 
grind;” of course not. Oh, no! not much. I think I can 
see the handle sticking out, nevertheless. Perhaps he can’t. 
“ W. M. W.” has ne’er an axe. But his Light Brahmas 
have “no feathers on the middle toe,” I believe. There- 
fore the late new standard is all right on the Brahma goose, 
and he knows it is correct, because he don’t see nary feathers 
on his middle toes ; I mean his fowl’s toes, of course. Bully 
boy! He don’t dare to trust the hock experiment, but he 
will sell a few Brahmas up to the standard in leg-feathering, 
no doubt, though he has no axe to grind publicly in saying 
this. 
Another good Yankee breeder entertains this same crot- 
chet, with the pedigree attachment had. At a late exhibi- 
tion he entered some large Light Brahmas, with bright 
yellow backs, which some fanciers naturally objected to. 
“They would moult out,” he said. His fowls have no 
middle-toe feathering, and so he helps to fix this regulation 
in the standard, and thus grinds his axe very sharp. “ The 
milk-white color” covers yellow, creamy, pale blue, or any 
other tint you can find in milk. This saves his yellow 
backs — I mean upon his fowl’s back — and thus his hatchet 
is kept constantly bright and useful. 
A noted breeder in Philadelphia whose yards were cursed 
with the English hock nuisance upon Dark Brahmas and 
Buff Cochins, failed in one of the earlier New York Con- 
ventions to get this nuisance recognized. But by persever- 
ance and keeping an eye to business, he finally succeeded in 
getting the too pliant committeemen to say in the standard 
that the “hock is objectionable, but not a disqualification.” 
So he won, for the nonce, and managed to get rid of his hocked 
birds to the green ’uns before the change occurred in the re- 
revised standard perhaps. But, in advocating this foreign 
hock, of course, he “had no axe to grind !” O no, never ! 
In the late New York meeting I saw one gentleman who 
is a game man (I mean a breeder of game fowls), hailing 
from Connecticut, I think, who don’t like a neighboring 
game breeder’s varieties, I supposed (from listening to the 
debate), because one of the gentlemen’s birds could lick the 
other’s fancy fowls out of their boots, though I don’t know 
this to be the fact. But one of the debaters was on the com- 
mittee, and the other wasn’t. The former “didn’t see ” the 
recognition of the latter’s varieties of games, while he did 
see his own fixed all right in the standard of excellence, 
originally. The other showed his spurs on this it seems, 
and went to Boston to “ protest” before the Executive Com- 
