If every hen should only raise five broods yearly of ten each, and there were ten hens to start with, at the end of two years they would number 344,760, after the superfluous roosters were sold; and then, supposing the extra eggs to have paid for their keeping and the produce to be worth only a dollar and a half a pair, there would be a clear profit of $258,520.  Allowing for occasional deaths, this sum might be stated in round numbers at a quarter of a million, which would be a liberal increase from ten hens.  Of course I did not expect to do as well as this, but merely mention what might be done with good luck and forcing.

    ROBERT ROOSEVELT.

Having always heard, on the best authority, that there was “money in hens,” I invested largely in prize fowls secured at State fairs and large poultry shows, buying as many kinds as possible to make an effective and brilliant display in their “runs.”

There is a good deal of money in my hens—­how to get it back is the present problem.  These hens were all heralded as famous layers; several did lay in the traveling coops on the journey, great pinky-brown beauties, just to show what they could do if they chose, then stopped suddenly.  I wrote anxiously to former owners of this vaunted stock to explain such disappointing behavior.  Some guessed the hens were just moulting, others thought “may be they were broody”; a few had the frankness to agree with me that it was mighty curious, but hens always were “sorter contrary critters.”

Their appetites remained normal, but, as the little girl said of her pet bantam, they only lay about doing nothing.  And when guests desired some of my fine fresh eggs boiled for breakfast, I used to go secretly to a neighbor and buy a dozen, but never gave away the mortifying situation.

Seeing piles of ducks’ eggs in a farmer’s barn, all packed for market, and picturing the producers, thirty white Pekins, a snowy, self-supporting fleet on my reformed lakelet, I bought the whole lot, and for long weary months they were fed and pampered and coaxed and reasoned with, shut up, let out, kept on the water, forbidden to go to it, but not one egg to be seen!

It was considered a rich joke in that locality that a city woman who was trying to farm, had applied for these ducks just as they had completed their labors for the season of 1888-’90; they were also extremely venerable, and the reticent owner rejoiced to be relieved of an expensive burden at good rates.  Knowing nothing of these facts in natural history, I pondered deeply over the double phenomenon.  I said the hens seemed normal only as to appetite; the ducks proved abnormal in this respect.  They were always coming up to the back door, clamoring for food—­always unappeased.  They preferred cake, fresh bread, hot boiled potatoes, doted on tender bits of meat, but would gobble up anything and everything, more voracious and less fastidious than the ordinary hog