Leg weakness. 5. Paralysis of legs. 6. Elephantiasis.

Next, diseases caused by parasites.

Then, injuries.

Lastly, miscellaneous.

I could add a still longer list of unclassified ills: Homesickness,
fits, melancholia, corns, blindness from fighting too much, etc.

Now that I have learned to raise chickens, it is a hard and slow
struggle to get any killed. I say in an off-hand manner, with assumed
nonchalance: "Ellen, I want Tom to kill a rooster at once for tomorrow's
dinner, and I have an order from a friend for four more, so he must
select five to-night." Then begins the trouble. "Oh," pleads Ellen,
"don't kill dear Dick! poor, dear Dick! That is Tom's pet of all; so big
and handsome and knows so much! He will jump up on Tom's shoulder and
eat out of his hand and come when he calls--and those big Brahmas--don't
you know how they were brought up by hand, as you might say, and they
know me and hang around the door for crumbs, and that beauty of a
Wyandock, you <i>couldn't</i> eat <i>him</i>!" When the matter is decided, as the
guillotining is going on, Ellen and I sit listening to the axe thuds and
the death squaks, while she wrings her hands, saying: "O dearie me! What
a world--the dear Lord ha' mercy on us poor creatures! What a thing to
look into, that we must kill the poor innocents to eat them. And they
were so tame and cunning, and would follow me all around!" Then I tell
her of the horrors of the French Revolution to distract her attention
from the present crisis, and alluded to the horrors of cannibalism
recently disclosed in Africa. Then I fall into a queer reverie and
imagine how awful it would be if we should ever be called to submit to a
race of beings as much larger than we are as we are above the fowls. I
almost hear such a monster of a house-wife, fully ninety feet high, say
to a servant, looking sternly and critically at me:

"That fat, white creature must be killed; just eats her old head
off--will soon be too tough"--Ugh! Here Tom comes with five headless
fowls. Wasn't that a weird fancy of mine?

Truly "Me and Crankin's two different critters."

From the following verse, quoted from a recent poultry magazine, I
conclude that I must be classed as a "chump." As it contains the secret
of success in every undertaking, it should be committed to memory by all
my readers.

"Grit makes the man,
The want of it the chump.
The men who win,
Lay hold, hang on, and hump."