- end_line
- 5300
- extracted_at
- 2026-01-30T20:48:26.981Z
- extracted_by
- structure-extraction-lambda
- start_line
- 5202
- text
- ‘Is there any hope of your wife’s recovery?’ said I, modestly seeking to
turn the conversation.
‘Not the least.’
‘The children?’
‘Very little.’
‘It must be a doleful life, then, for all concerned. This lonely
solitude--this shanty--hard work--hard times.’
‘Haven’t I Trumpet? He’s the cheerer. He crows through all; crows at the
darkest: Glory to God in the highest! Continually he crows it.’
‘Just the import I first ascribed to his crow, Merrymusk, when first I
heard it from my hill. I thought some rich nabob owned some costly
Shanghai; little weening any such poor man as you owned this lusty cock
of a domestic breed.’
‘_Poor_ man like _me_? Why call _me_ poor? Don’t the cock _I_ own
glorify this otherwise inglorious, lean, lantern-jawed land? Didn’t _my_
cock encourage _you_? And _I_ give you all this glorification away
gratis. I am a great philanthropist. I am a rich man--a very rich man,
and a very happy one. Crow, Trumpet.’
The roof jarred.
I returned home in a deep mood. I was not wholly at rest concerning the
soundness of Merrymusk’s views of things, though full of admiration for
him. I was thinking on the matter before my door, when I heard the cock
crow again. Enough. Merrymusk is right.
Oh, noble cock! oh, noble man!
I did not see Merrymusk for some weeks after this; but hearing the
glorious and rejoicing crow, I supposed that all went as usual with him.
My own frame of mind remained a rejoicing one. The cock still inspired
me. I saw another mortgage piled on my plantation; but only bought
another dozen of stout, and a dozen-dozen of Philadelphia porter. Some
of my relatives died; I wore no mourning, but for three days drank stout
in preference to porter, stout being of the darker colour. I heard the
cock crow the instant I received the unwelcome tidings.
‘Your health in this stout, oh, noble cock!’
I thought I would call on Merrymusk again, not having seen or heard of
him for some time now. Approaching the place, there were no signs of
motion about the shanty. I felt a strange misgiving. But the cock crew
from within doors, and the boding vanished. I knocked at the door. A
feeble voice bade me enter. The curtain was no longer drawn; the whole
house was a hospital now. Merrymusk lay on a heap of old clothes; wife
and children were all in their beds. The cock was perched on an old
hogshead hoop, swung from the ridge-pole in the middle of the shanty.
‘You are sick, Merrymusk,’ said I, mournfully.
‘No, I am well,’ he feebly answered. ‘Crow, Trumpet.’
I shrunk. The strong soul in the feeble body appalled me.
But the cock crew.
The roof jarred.
‘How is Mrs. Merrymusk?’
‘Well.’
‘And the children?’
‘Well. All well.’
The last two words he shouted forth in a kind of wild ecstasy of triumph
over ill. It was too much. His head fell back. A white napkin seemed
dropped upon his face. Merrymusk was dead.
An awful fear seized me.
But the cock crew.
The cock shook his plumage as if each feather were a banner. The cock
hung from the shanty roof as erewhile the trophied flags from the dome
of St. Paul’s. The cock terrified me with exceeding wonder.
I drew nigh the bedsides of the woman and children. They marked my look
of strange affright; they knew what had happened.
‘My good man is just dead,’ breathed the woman lowly. ‘Tell me true?’
‘Dead,’ said I.
The cock crew.
She fell back, without a sigh, and through long-loving sympathy was
dead.
The cock crew.
- title
- Chunk 32