- end_line
- 4704
- extracted_at
- 2026-01-30T20:48:26.981Z
- extracted_by
- structure-extraction-lambda
- start_line
- 4650
- text
- 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 the east.
After breakfast I took my stick and sallied down the road. There were
many gentlemen’s seats dotting the neighbouring country, and I made no
doubt that some of these opulent gentlemen had invested a hundred-dollar
bill in some royal Shanghai recently imported in the ship Trade Wind, or
the ship White Squall, or the ship Sovereign of the Seas; for it must
needs have been a brave ship with a brave name which bore the fortunes
of so brave a cock. I resolved to walk the entire country, and find this
noble foreigner out; but thought it would not be amiss to inquire on the
way at the humblest homesteads, whether, peradventure, they had heard of
a lately-imported Shanghai belonging to any of the gentlemen settlers
from the city; for it was plain that no poor farmer, no poor man of any
sort, could own such an oriental trophy, such a Great Bell of St. Paul’s
swung in a cock’s throat.
I met an old man, ploughing, in a field nigh the road-side fence.
‘My friend, have you heard an extraordinary cock-crow of late?’
‘Well, well,’ he drawled, ‘I don’t know--the Widow Crowfoot has a
cock--and Squire Squaretoes has a cock--and I have a cock, and they all
crow. But I don’t know of any on ’em with ’strordinary crows.’
‘Good morning to you,’ said I, shortly; ‘it’s plain that you have not
heard the crow of the Emperor of China’s chanticleer.’
- title
- Chunk 24