better; if they furnish forth my table with
succulent broilers, with nutritious roasters, with ambrosial
chicken-pasties, I am not unappreciative; but I realize that all these
things might be had from my neighbors' barnyards. What I primarily value
my own hens for is their companionship. Talk about the companionship of
dogs and cats! Cats walk about my home, sleek and superior; they make me
feel that I am there on sufferance. One cannot even laugh at them, their
manner is so perfect. Dogs, on the other hand, develop an unreasoning
and tyrannous devotion to their masters, which is not really good for
either, though it may be morbidly gratifying to sentimental natures.

But hens! No decorous superiority here, no mush of devotion. No; for
varied folly, for rich and highly developed perversities, combining all
that is choicest of masculine and feminine foible--for this and much
more, commend me to the hen. Ever since we came to the farm, my sister
the hen has entertained me with her vagaries. Jaques's delight at his
encounter with Touchstone is pale compared with mine in their society.
Nothing cheers me more than to sit on a big rock in the barnyard and
watch the hens walking about. Their very gait pleases me--the way they
bob their heads, the "genteel" way they have of picking up their feet,
for all the world as though they cared where they stepped; the absent
and superior manner in which they "scratch for worms," their gaze fixed
on the sky, then cock their heads downwards with an indifferent air,
absently pick up a chip, drop it, and walk on! Did any one ever see a
hen really find a worm? I never did. There are no worms in our barnyard,
anyhow; Jonathan must have dug them all up for bait when he was a boy. I
have even tried throwing some real worms to them, and they always
respond by a few nervous cackles, and walk past the brown wrigglers with
a detached manner, and the robins get them later. And yet they continue
to go through all these forms, and we continue to call it "scratching
for worms."

Jonathan has nothing to do with my hens except to give advice. One of
his hobbies is the establishing of a breed of hens marked by
intelligence, which he maintains might be done by careful selection of
the mothers. Accordingly, whenever he goes to the roost to pick out a
victim for the sacrificial hatchet, he first gently pulls the tail of
each candidate in turn, and by the dim light of the lantern carefully
observes the natur