a time I have seen him swallow hurriedly, and in private, some dainty titbit he has found unexpectedly.  He has no particular chivalry.  He gives no special encouragement to his hen when he becomes a prospective father, and renders little assistance when the responsibilities become actualities.  His only personal message or contribution to the world is his raucous cock-a-doodle-doo, which, being uttered most frequently at dawn, is the most ill-timed and offensive of all musical notes.  It is so unnecessary too, as if the day didn’t come soon enough without his warning; but I suppose he is anxious to waken his hens and get them at their daily task, and so he disturbs the entire community.  In short, I dislike him; his swagger, his autocratic strut, his greed, his irritating self-consciousness, his endless parading of himself up and down in a procession of one.

Of course his character is largely the result of polygamy.  His weaknesses are only what might be expected; and as for the hens, I have considerable respect for the patience, sobriety, and dignity with which they endure an institution particularly offensive to all women.  In their case they do not even have the sustaining thought of its being an article of religion, so they are to be complimented the more.

There is nothing on earth so feminine as a hen—­not womanly, simply feminine.  Those men of insight who write the Woman’s Page in the Sunday newspapers study hens more than women, I sometimes think; at any rate, their favourite types are all present on this poultry farm.

Some families of White Leghorns spend most of their time in the rickyard, where they look extremely pretty, their slender white shapes and red combs and wattles well set off by the background of golden hayricks.  There is a great oak-tree in one corner, with a tall ladder leaning against its trunk, and a capital roosting-place on a long branch running at right angles with the ladder.  I try to spend a quarter of an hour there every night before supper, just for the pleasure of seeing the feathered “women-folks” mount that ladder.

A dozen of them surround the foot, waiting restlessly for their turn.  One little white lady flutters up on the lowest round and perches there until she reviews the past, faces the present, and forecasts the future; during which time she is gathering courage for the next jump.  She cackles, takes up one foot and then the other, tilts back and forth, holds up her skirts and drops them again, cocks her head nervously to see whether they are all staring at her below, gives half a dozen preliminary springs which mean nothing, declares she can’t and won’t go up any faster, unties her bonnet strings and pushes back her hair, pulls down her dress to cover her toes, and finally alights on the next round, swaying to and fro until she gains her equilibrium, when she proceeds to enact the same scene over again.