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he had never seen a _hen swim_. He had seen ducks do it, and swans, and geese, but he never remembered to have seen a HEN swim. What was the reason? Didn't they know how? or _wouldn't_ they do it? Hal was resolved to get at the bottom of that problem without delay; so he jumped up and chased one round till he fell down and tore his jacket, and the hen flew up in a tree. Then he tried for the speckled widow; _she_ of course was too sharp for him. At last he secured the brown one, and hiding her under his jacket started for the "creek," about a quarter of a mile off. He told the hen, going along, that if she didn't know how to swim, it was high time she did, and that he was going to try her any how; the hen cocked up her eye but said nothing, though she had her thoughts. The fact was she never had been in the habit of going out of the barn-yard, without asking leave of the rooster, who was a regular old "Blue Beard;" and she knew very well that he wouldn't scratch her up another worm, for a good twelve-month, for being absent without leave. So she dug her claws into Hal's side, every now and then, and tried to peck him with her bill, but Hal told her it was no use, for go into that creek she _should_. Well, he got to the creek at last, and stood triumphantly on a little bank just over it. He took a good grip of his hen, and then lifted up his arm to give her a nice toss into the water. He told her that now she was to consider herself a _duck_, instead of a _hen_, (what a _goose_!) then over he went _splash_ into the water _himself_. The question was not _now_ whether the _hen_ could swim, but whether _he_ could; he floundered round and round, and screeched like a little bedlamite, and was just thinking of the last fib he told, when his brother Zedekiah came along and fished him out. Hal prefers now to try his experiments on his father's door-step; as to the hen, poor chicken-hearted thing! she didn't dare to show her wet feathers to her lordly old rooster; so she smuggled herself into neighbor Jones' barn-yard and laid her eggs wherever it suited the old farmer, for the sake of her board. KNUD IVERSON. I suppose that every boy and girl who reads my "Little Ferns," has heard or read of martyrs. You have all owned a primer with the picture of "John Rogers," who was burned alive for being a good man; then, you remember "Stephen," of Bible memory, who was stoned to death, for the same reason.
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