THE HEN.

Ashburton Guardian, Volume VII, Issue 1667, 20 September 1887, Page 3

THE HEN.

♦■ The hen haa never achieved much die tinotlon as a songstress, but her reputation for doing whatever she undertaker, In a highly satisfactory maaner, has be some national. She fills a long felt want, and fills it chock fall. Her chief characteristic is persistency, and when the maternal Instinct is strong within her the only way to prevent her " sitting " is to clip her tall feathers about two inches abaft her bill and send her to the market as a spri jg chicken. Hens are said to have attained the age of 30 years, and no man who has frittered away 10 years of his life m a boardiog-hoose will dispute the record. The hen is also noted for her perversity. The man who takes the advice of agricultural papers, edited by nickel-plated city dudes, who couldn't tell a sulky plough from a oar load of guano, and goea into the hen basinesa to amass wealth, quickly realises the truth of this ; for when eggs •re Belling at six cents pur dozen every able-bodied hen on the roach will get np before daylight and work all day as thoogh she wan {the national hope, but when eggs are scarce at four bits a dczsn, ■he goes on to strike, and when her employer tries to compromise with her, ■he tells him that the union is allowing her two dollars a dey, and she don't propose to strike a solitary lick until the treasury is drained as dry as a prohibltional editorial. Toe hen and the baby •re the only two creatures that defy the lord of creation and obey his consort. A man will walk the flocr all night with a howling baby and wear his throat out ttylng to talk baby talk to it, but tha harder hs works the more it howls ; bat the moment his wife snuggles it down beside her and says " there ! there ! " It shuts right up and begins pawing •round for something else to engage its attention. When a dozm hens get into the garden and begin burrowing In the geranium bed, the lord of the manor rushes out, and, after filling his bat with bricks (sura enough ones), begins ft wild assault. Then every hen raises her voice and makes a hundred unintelligible lemarks, and then they scatter hither •nd yon, and fly ia his face, and run under the house, and rcuad and round the garden, while he gets hot m the ooll«r •nd chucks bricks right and left and imashea window glass, and perspires, and mixes his language with remarks that would not look well m print, and finally goes over to the neighbor's to borrow a gun, declaring that he will wipe the whole hen tribe off the face of j the earth . As soon as he is out of sight, his wite comes into the garden, ehakes her skirt?, and says, " ahoo there,' 1 and m two minutes every hen is back on the reservation. The consort of the hen is some what larger, and is a Mormon by nature and a slugger by profession. When not engaged m putting up a job on the hens, by eyeing a grain of corn and Insinuating that the hen that puts on style •nd geti there first will secure it, and then deliberately swallows it himself, jast • dozen anxious hens are reaching for the prize, he is either taking a licking from tome other rooster or inviting an enemy that hs feels certain he can knock out m three rounds, to come over and get scalped. The rooßter ia usad by politicians bb the emblem of victory, because, like the rooiter, a p litlclan ib principally noise and "promises broken but nover kept."—" Watson's Illuminator,"