l kinds. Therefore, when S. S.
Jackson presented Alfred with a pen of India Games, you could look out
upon the chicken lot at any time of day and see three or four
cock-fights in progress at the same time. The hands were kept from their
work, attracted by the gameness of the cocks.

A beautiful litter, (as Alfred termed them), of top-knots, Van Houden
chickens, were the next addition to the poultry yard. When cautioned
that he would soon have a polyglot lot of poultry, Alfred, for the first
time, weakened on the chicken proposition; more for the reason that he
was disgusted with their polygamous propensities. Although living in one
herd, he imagined that each breed would live to itself. Alfred dubbed
them "Mormons."

Pearl and Mrs. Field had become interested in the little chicks. As hen
after hen came off, her brood was carried to the house and endeavors
made to raise the chicks by hand. They had some forty or fifty, when
rats, or a "varmint" penetrated the coop and twenty-four were killed in
one night. The sorrow caused by this loss of their pets was partly
compensated for by the closer ties formed with those spared. Each one
was named. When either Pearl or Aunt Tillie passed out of the kitchen
door, the chicks would fly to meet them. Stooping down to feed them,
they would fly on the shoulders of the two women.

One of the grocery bills rendered contained an item, "Four dollars for
chickens." Mrs. Mott had also sold Mrs. Field quite a number of
chickens. Alfred supposed these chickens were for breeding purposes. One
Sunday the table was without chicken. Mrs. Field explained she had no
one to go after them. "I'd have shot them for you if you had advised me
you wanted chickens killed." "Chickens killed?" repeated both Pearl and
Aunt Tillie, "Well, I'd like to see you or anyone else kill _our_
chickens. Why, there's Betty, Biddy, Snooks, Dick and Kelly; they're
just like humans. You don't imagine for a moment we will kill any of
_our_ chickens, do you?" And Alfred bought chickens for the table all
summer.

Alfred promised his wife that he would look after the farming part. The
chickens and dairy came under her charge. He therefore, sat down to his
desk and wrote out minute instructions as to fields to be planted and
designated the crops to sow in each field. He ordered a hill field, near
the barn, sowed in buckwheat. The farmer meekly intimated that ten acres
of buckwheat and five acres of oats seemed rather dispropo