One day while I was talking with Mr. Keyser upon the subject of the cock he pointed to a chicken that was roosting upon an adjoining fence, and told me a story about the fowl that I must refuse to believe.

“Perhaps you never noticed that rooster,” said Keyser—­“very likely you wouldn’t have observed him; but I don’t care in what light you look at him, the more you study him, the more talented he appears.  You talk about your American iggles and birds of freedom, but that insignificant-looking chicken yonder can give any of them twenty points and pocket them at the first shot.  That rooster has traits of character that’d adorn almost any walk of life.

[Illustration:  THE AFFAIR AT THE POULTRY-SHOW]

“Most chickens are kinder stupid; but what I like about him is that he is sympathetic, he has feeling.  I know last fall that my Shanghai hen was taken sick while she was trying to hatch out some eggs, and that rooster was so compassionate that he used to go in and set on that nest for hours, trying to help her out, so that she could go off recreating after exercise.  And when she died, he turned right in and took charge of things—­seemed to feel that he ought to be a father to those unborn little orphans; and he straddled around over those eggs for ever so long.  He never got much satisfaction out of it, though.  Most of them were duck eggs, and it seemed to kinder cut him up when he looked at those birds after they hatched out.  He took it to heart, and appeared to feel low-spirited and afflicted.  He would go off and stand by himself—­stand on one leg in a corner of the fence and let his mind brood over his troubles until you’d pity him.  It disgusted him to think how the job turned out.

“Now, you wouldn’t think such a chicken as that would have much courage, but he’d just as leave fight a wagon-load of tigers as not.  He got a notion in his head that that rooster over there on the Baptist church-steeple was alive, and he couldn’t bear to think that it was up there sailing around and putting on airs over him, and a good many times I’ve seen him try to fly up at it, so’s to arrange a fight.  When he found he couldn’t make it, he’d crow at the Baptist rooster and dare it to come down, and at last, when all his efforts were useless, would you believe that rooster one day attacked the sexton as the weathercock’s next friend, and drove his spurs so far into the sexton’s shanks that he walked on crutches for more’n a week?  I never saw a mere chicken have such fine instincts and such pluck.

“He is a splendid fighter, anyway, just as he stands.  Why, he had a little fuss with Murphy’s Poland rooster here some time back, and instead of going at him and taking the chances of getting whipped, that chicken actually put himself into training, ate nothing but corn, took regular exercise, went to roost early, took a cold bath every morning and got a pullet to rub him down with a corn-cob.  It was wonderful; and in a week or so he was all bone and muscle, and he flickered over the fence after Murphy’s rooster and sent him whizzing into the next world on the fourth round.