THE SEVENTH PULLET

"It's not the daily grind that I complain of," said Blenkinthrope
resentfully; "it's the dull grey sameness of my life outside of office
hours. Nothing of interest comes my way, nothing remarkable or out of
the common. Even the little things that I do try to find some interest
in don't seem to interest other people. Things in my garden, for
instance."

"The potato that weighed just over two pounds," said his friend Gorworth.

"Did I tell you about that?" said Blenkinthrope; "I was telling the
others in the train this morning. I forgot if I'd told you."

"To be exact you told me that it weighed just under two pounds, but I
took into account the fact that abnormal vegetables and freshwater fish
have an after-life, in which growth is not arrested."

"You're just like the others," said Blenkinthrope sadly, "you only make
fun of it."

"The fault is with the potato, not with us," said Gorworth; "we are not
in the least interested in it because it is not in the least interesting.
The men you go up in the train with every day are just in the same case
as yourself; their lives are commonplace and not very interesting to
themselves, and they certainly are not going to wax enthusiastic over the
commonplace events in other men's lives. Tell them something startling,
dramatic, piquant that has happened to yourself or to someone in your
family, and you will capture their interest at once. They will talk
about you with a certain personal pride to all their acquaintances. 'Man
I know intimately, fellow called Blenkinthrope, lives down my way, had
two of his fingers clawed clean off by a lobster he was carrying home to
supper. Doctor says entire hand may have to come off.' Now that is
conversation of a very high order. But imagine walking into a tennis
club with the remark: 'I know a man who has grown a potato weighing two
and a quarter pounds.'"

"But hang it all, my dear fellow," said Blenkinthrope impatiently,
"haven't I just told you that nothing of a remarkable nature ever happens
to me?"

"Invent something," said Gorworth. Since winning a prize for excellence
in Scriptural knowledge at a preparatory school he had felt licensed to
be a little more unscrupulous than the circle he moved in. Much might
surely be excused to one who in early life could give a list of seventeen
trees mentioned in the Old Testament.

"What sort of thing?" asked Blenkinthrope, somewhat snappishly.

"A snake got