waxed hoarse and solemnly grave, mocking at mirth, and the wine has lost
its flavor, and become only liquor to distend their paunches, and sweet
intoxication never comes to drown the memory of the past, but mere
saturation and waterloggedness and distention. The most aldermanic, with
his chin upon a heart-leaf, which serves for a napkin to his drooling
chaps, under this northern shore quaffs a deep draught of the
once scorned water, and passes round the cup with the ejaculation
tr-r-r-oonk, tr-r-r--oonk, tr-r-r-oonk! and straightway comes over the
water from some distant cove the same password repeated, where the
next in seniority and girth has gulped down to his mark; and when this
observance has made the circuit of the shores, then ejaculates the
master of ceremonies, with satisfaction, tr-r-r-oonk! and each in
his turn repeats the same down to the least distended, leakiest, and
flabbiest paunched, that there be no mistake; and then the howl goes
round again and again, until the sun disperses the morning mist, and
only the patriarch is not under the pond, but vainly bellowing troonk
from time to time, and pausing for a reply.

I am not sure that I ever heard the sound of cock-crowing from my
clearing, and I thought that it might be worth the while to keep a
cockerel for his music merely, as a singing bird. The note of this once
wild Indian pheasant is certainly the most remarkable of any bird's, and
if they could be naturalized without being domesticated, it would soon
become the most famous sound in our woods, surpassing the clangor of the
goose and the hooting of the owl; and then imagine the cackling of the
hens to fill the pauses when their lords' clarions rested! No wonder
that man added this bird to his tame stock--to say nothing of the eggs
and drumsticks. To walk in a winter morning in a wood where these birds
abounded, their native woods, and hear the wild cockerels crow on the
trees, clear and shrill for miles over the resounding earth, drowning
the feebler notes of other birds--think of it! It would put nations on
the alert. Who would not be early to rise, and rise earlier and earlier
every successive day of his life, till he became unspeakably healthy,
wealthy, and wise? This foreign bird's note is celebrated by the poets
of all countries along with the notes of their native songsters. All
climates agree with brave Chanticleer. He is more indigenous even than
the natives. His health is ever good, his lung