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- 4654
- extracted_at
- 2026-01-30T20:47:56.336Z
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- 4600
- text
- and over the unlucky risings of the poor oppressed peoples abroad, and
over the railroad and steamboat accidents, and over even the loss of
my dear friend, with a calm, good-natured rapture of defiance, which
astounded myself. I felt as though I could meet Death, and invite
him to dinner, and toast the Catacombs with him, in pure overflow of
self-reliance and a sense of universal security.
Toward evening I went up to the hill once more to find whether, indeed,
the glorious cock would prove game even from the rising of the sun
unto the going down thereof. Talk of Vespers or Curfew!--the evening
crow of the cock went out of his mighty throat all over the land and
inhabited it, like Xerxes from the East with his double-winged host. It
was miraculous. Bless me, what a crow! The cock went game to roost that
night, depend upon it, victorious over the entire day, and bequeathing
the echoes of his thousand crows to night.
After an unwontedly sound, refreshing sleep I rose early, feeling
like a carriage-spring--light--elliptical--airy--buoyant as
sturgeon-nose--and, like a foot-ball, bounded up the hill. Hark!
Shanghai was up before me. The early bird that caught the worm--crowing
like a bugle worked by an engine--lusty, loud, all jubilation. From
the scattered farmhouses a multitude of other cocks were crowing,
and replying to each other's crows. But they were as flageolets to a
trombone. Shanghai would suddenly break in, and overwhelm all their
crows with his one domineering blast. He seemed to have nothing to do
with any other concern. He replied to no other crow, but crowed solely
by himself, on his own account, in solitary scorn and independence.
Oh, brave cock!--oh, noble Shanghai!--oh, bird rightly offered up by
the invincible Socrates, in testimony of his final victory over life.
As I live, thought I, this blessed day, will I go and seek out the
Shanghai, and buy him, if I have to clap another mortgage on my land.
I listened attentively now, striving to mark from what direction the
crow came. But it so charged and replenished, and made bountiful and
overflowing all the air, that it was impossible to say from what
precise point the exultation came. All that I could decide upon was
this: the crow came from out of the east, and not from out of the west.
I then considered with myself how far a cock-crow might be heard. In
this still country, shut in, too, by mountains, sounds were audible at
great distances. Besides, the undulations of the land, the abuttings of
the mountains into the rolling hill and valley below, produced strange
echoes, and reverberations, and multiplications, and accumulations of
resonance, very remarkable to hear, and very puzzling to think of.
Where lurked this valiant Shanghai--this bird of cheerful Socrates--the
game-fowl Greek who died unappalled? Where lurked he? Oh, noble cock,
where are you? Crow once more, my Bantam! my princely, my imperial
Shanghai! my bird of the Emperor of China! Brother of the sun! Cousin
of great Jove! where are you?--one crow more, and tell me your number!
Hark! like a full orchestra of the cocks of all nations, forth burst
the crow. But where from? There it is; but where? There was no telling,
further than it came from out of the east.
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