sly to former owners of this vaunted stock to
explain such disappointing behavior. Some guessed the hens were just
moulting, others thought "may be they were broody"; a few had the
frankness to agree with me that it was mighty curious, but hens always
were "sorter contrary critters."

Their appetites remained normal, but, as the little girl said of her pet
bantam, they only lay about doing nothing. And when guests desired some
of my fine fresh eggs boiled for breakfast, I used to go secretly to a
neighbor and buy a dozen, but never gave away the mortifying situation.

Seeing piles of ducks' eggs in a farmer's barn, all packed for market,
and picturing the producers, thirty white Pekins, a snowy,
self-supporting fleet on my reformed lakelet, I bought the whole lot,
and for long weary months they were fed and pampered and coaxed and
reasoned with, shut up, let out, kept on the water, forbidden to go to
it, but not one egg to be seen!

It was considered a rich joke in that locality that a city woman who was
trying to farm, had applied for these ducks just as they had completed
their labors for the season of 1888-'90; they were also extremely
venerable, and the reticent owner rejoiced to be relieved of an
expensive burden at good rates. Knowing nothing of these facts in
natural history, I pondered deeply over the double phenomenon. I said
the hens seemed normal only as to appetite; the ducks proved abnormal in
this respect. They were always coming up to the back door, clamoring
for food--always unappeased. They preferred cake, fresh bread, hot
boiled potatoes, doted on tender bits of meat, but would gobble up
anything and everything, more voracious and less fastidious than the
ordinary hog of commerce. Bags of corn were consumed in a flash,
"shorts" were never long before their eager gaze, they went for every
kind of nourishment provided for the rest of the menagerie. A goat is
supposed to have a champion appetite and digestion, but a duck--at least
one of my ducks--leaves a goat so far behind that he never could regain
his reputation for omniverosity. They were too antique to be eaten
themselves--their longevity entitled them to respect; they could not be
disposed of by the shrewdest market man to the least particular of
boarding-house providers; I could only regard them with amazement and
horror and let them go on eating me out of house and home and
purse-strings.

But at last I knew. I asked an honest man from afar,