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- 4778
- extracted_at
- 2026-01-30T20:48:26.981Z
- extracted_by
- structure-extraction-lambda
- start_line
- 4696
- text
- ‘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.’
Presently I met another old man mending a tumble-down old rail-fence.
The rails were rotten, and at every move of the old man’s hand they
crumbled into yellow ochre. He had much better let the fence alone, or
else get him new rails. And here I must say, that one cause of the sad
fact why idiocy more prevails among farmers than any other class of
people, is owing to their undertaking the mending of rotten rail-fences
in warm, relaxing spring weather. The enterprise is a hopeless one. It
is a laborious one; it is a bootless one. It is an enterprise to make
the heart break. Vast pains squandered upon a vanity. For how can one
make rotten rail-fences stand up on their rotten pins? By what magic put
pith into sticks which have lain freezing and baking through sixty
consecutive winters and summers? This it is, this wretched endeavour to
mend rotten rail-fences with their own rotten rails, which drives many
farmers into the asylum.
On the face of the old man in question incipient idiocy was plainly
marked. For, about sixty rods before him extended one of the most
unhappy and desponding broken-hearted Virginia rail-fences I ever saw in
my life. While in a field behind, were a set of young steers, possessed
as by devils, continually butting at this forlorn old fence, and
breaking through it here and there, causing the old man to drop his work
and chase them back within bounds. He would chase them with a piece of
rail huge as Goliath’s beam, but as light as cork. At the first
flourish, it crumbled into powder.
‘My friend,’ said I, addressing this woeful mortal, ‘have you heard an
extraordinary cock-crow of late?’
I might as well have asked him if he had heard the death-tick. He stared
at me with a long, bewildered, doleful, and unutterable stare, and
without reply resumed his unhappy labours.
What a fool, thought I, to have asked such an uncheerful and uncheerable
creature about a cheerful cock!
I walked on. I had now descended the high land where my house stood, and
being in a low tract could not hear the crow of the Shanghai, which
doubtless overshot me there. Besides, the Shanghai might be at lunch of
corn and oats, or taking a nap, and so interrupted his jubilations for a
while.
At length I encountered riding along the road, a portly gentleman--nay,
a _pursy_ one--of great wealth, who had recently purchased him some
noble acres, and built him a noble mansion, with a goodly fowl-house
attached, the fame whereof spread through all that country. Thought I,
Here now is the owner of the Shanghai.
‘Sir,’ said I, ‘excuse me, but I am a countryman of yours, and would
ask, if so be you own any Shanghais?’
‘Oh, yes; I have ten Shanghais.’
‘Ten!’ exclaimed I in wonder; ‘and do they all crow?’
‘Most lustily; every soul of them; I wouldn’t own a cock that wouldn’t
crow.’
‘Will you turn back, and show me those Shanghais?’
‘With pleasure: I am proud of them. They cost me, in the lump, six
hundred dollars.’
As I walked by the side of his horse, I was thinking to myself whether
possibly I had not mistaken the harmoniously combined crowings of ten
Shanghais in a squad, for the supernatural crow of a single Shanghai by
himself.
‘Sir,’ said I, ‘is there one of your Shanghais which far exceeds all the
others in the lustiness, musicalness, and inspiring effects of his
crow?’
‘They crow pretty much alike, I believe,’ he courteously replied; ‘I
really don’t know that I could tell their crow apart.’
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