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- 5123
- extracted_at
- 2026-01-30T20:48:26.981Z
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- structure-extraction-lambda
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- 5002
- text
- delineated on antique shields. His plumage was snowy, traced with gold.
He walked in front of the shanty, like a peer of the realm; his crest
lifted, his chest heaved out, his embroidered trappings flashing in the
light. His pace was wonderful. He looked like some noble foreigner. He
looked like some Oriental king in some magnificent Italian opera.
Merrymusk advanced from the door.
‘Pray, is not that the Signor Beneventano?’
‘Sir!’
‘That’s the cock,’ said I, a little embarrassed. The truth was, my
enthusiasm had betrayed me into a rather silly inadvertence. I had made
a somewhat learned sort of allusion in the presence of an unlearned man.
Consequently, upon discovering it by his honest stare, I felt foolish;
but carried it off by declaring that _this was the cock_.
Now, during the preceding autumn I had been to the city, and had chanced
to be present at a performance of the Italian Opera. In that opera
figured in some royal character a certain Signor Beneventano--a man of a
tall, imposing person, clad in rich raiment, like to plumage, and with a
most remarkable, majestic, scornful stride. The Signor Beneventano
seemed on the point of tumbling over backward with exceeding
haughtiness. And, for all the world, the proud pace of the cock seemed
the very stage-pace of the Signor Beneventano.
Hark! Suddenly the cock paused, lifted his head still higher, ruffled
his plumes, seemed inspired, and sent forth a lusty crow. October
Mountain echoed it; other mountains sent it back; still others rebounded
it; it overran the country round. Now I plainly perceived how it was I
had chanced to hear the gladdening sound on my distant hill.
‘Good heavens! do you own the cock? Is that cock yours?’
‘Is it my cock!’ said Merrymusk, looking slyly gleeful out of the corner
of his long, solemn face.
‘Where did you get it?’
‘It chipped the shell here. I raised it.’
‘You?’
Hark! Another crow. It might have raised the ghosts of all the pines and
hemlocks ever cut down in that country. Marvellous cock! Having crowed,
he strode on again, surrounded by a bevy of admiring hens.
‘What will you take for Signor Beneventano?’
‘Sir?’
‘That magic cock!--what will you take for him?’
‘I won’t sell him.’
‘I will give you fifty dollars.’
‘Pooh!’
‘One hundred!’
‘Pish!’
‘Five hundred!’
‘Bah!’
‘And you a poor man?’
‘No; don’t I own that cock, and haven’t I refused five hundred dollars
for him?’
‘True,’ said I, in profound thought; ‘that’s a fact. You won’t sell him,
then?’
‘No.’
‘Will you give him?’
‘No.’
‘Will you _keep_ him, then!’ I shouted, in a rage.
‘Yes.’
I stood a while admiring the cock, and wondering at the man. At last I
felt a redoubled admiration of the one, and a redoubled deference for
the other.
‘Won’t you step in?’ said Merrymusk.
‘But won’t the cock be prevailed upon to join us?’ said I.
‘Yes. Trumpet! hither, boy! hither!’
The cock turned round, and strode up to Merrymusk.
‘Come!’
The cock followed us into the shanty.
‘Crow!’
The roof jarred.
Oh, noble cock!
I turned in silence upon my entertainer. There he sat on an old battered
chest, in his old tattered gray coat, with patches at his knees and
elbows, and a deplorably bunged hat. I glanced round the room. Bare
rafters overhead, but solid junks of jerked beef hanging from them.
Earth floor, but a heap of potatoes in one corner, and a sack of Indian
meal in another. A blanket was strung across the apartment at the
farther end, from which came a woman’s ailing voice and the voices of
ailing children. But somehow in the ailing of these voices there seemed
no complaint.
‘Mrs. Merrymusk and children?’
‘Yes.’
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- Chunk 30