- end_line
- 4481
- extracted_at
- 2026-01-30T20:47:56.336Z
- extracted_by
- structure-extraction-lambda
- start_line
- 4416
- text
- shoulder. I got it one night on the North River, when, in a crowded
boat, I gave up my berth to a sick lady, and staid on deck till morning
in drizzling weather. There's the thanks one gets for charity! Twinge!
Shoot away, ye rheumatics! Ye couldn't lay on worse if I were some
villain who had murdered the lady instead of befriending her. Dyspepsia
too--I am troubled with that.
Hallo! here come the calves, the two-year-olds, just turned out of
the barn into the pasture, after six months of cold victuals. What a
miserable-looking set, to be sure! A breaking up of a hard winter,
that's certain; sharp bones sticking out like elbows; all quilted
with a strange stuff dried on their flanks like layers of pancakes.
Hair worn quite off too, here and there; and where it ain't pancaked,
or worn off, looks like the rubbed sides of mangy old hair-trunks.
In fact, they are not six two-year-olds, but six abominable old
hair-trunks wandering about here in this pasture.
Hark! By Jove, what's that? See! the very hair-trunks prick their ears
at it, and stand and gaze away down into the rolling country yonder.
Hark again! How clear! how musical! how prolonged! What a triumphant
thanksgiving of a cock-crow! "_Glory be to God in the highest!_" It
says those very words as plain as ever cock did in this world. Why,
why, I began to feel a little in sorts again. It ain't so very misty,
after all. The sun yonder is beginning to show himself; I feel warmer.
Hark! There again! Did ever such a blessed cock-crow so ring out over
the earth before! Clear, shrill, full of pluck, full of fire, full of
fun, full of glee. It plainly says--"_Never say die!_" My friends, it
is extraordinary, is it not?
Unwittingly, I found that I had been addressing the two-year-olds--the
calves--in my enthusiasm; which shows how one's true nature will
betray itself at times in the most unconscious way. For what a very
two-year-old, and calf, I had been to fall into the sulks, on a hilltop
too, when a cock down in the lowlands there, without discourse of
reason, and quite penniless in the world, and with death hanging over
him at any moment from his hungry master, sends up a cry like a very
laureate celebrating the glorious victory of New Orleans.
Hark! there it goes again! My friends, that must be a Shanghai; no
domestic-born cock could crow in such prodigious exulting strains.
Plainly, my friends, a Shanghai of the Emperor of China's breed.
But my friends the hair-trunks, fairly alarmed at last by such
clamorously-victorious tones, were now scampering off, with their
tails flirting in the air, and capering with their legs in clumsy
enough sort of style, sufficiently evincing that they had not freely
flourished them for the six months last past.
Hark! there again! Whose cock is that? Who in this region can afford
to buy such an extraordinary Shanghai? Bless me--it makes my blood
bound--I feel wild. What? jumping on this rotten old log here, to flap
my elbows and crow too? And just now in the doleful dumps. And all this
from the simple crow of a cock. Marvelous cock! But soft--this fellow
now crows most lustily; but it's only morning; let's see how he'll crow
about noon, and towards nightfall. Come to think of it, cocks crow most
lustily in the beginning of the day. Their pluck ain't lasting, after
all. Yes, yes; even cocks have to succumb to the universal spell of
tribulation: jubilant in the beginning, but down in the mouth at the
end.
... "_Of fine mornings,
We fine lusty cocks begin our crows in gladness;
But when the eve does come we don't crow quite so much,
For then cometh despondency and madness._"
- title
- Chunk 3