CHAPTER XXII.

TRUE HISTORY OF "f.a.n.n.y FERN."

I was riding through Brookline, Ma.s.s., one fine afternoon, on my round-about way home from a fowl-hunting excursion in Norfolk County, when my attention was suddenly attracted by the appearance and carriage of the most extraordinary-looking bird I ever met with in the whole course of my poultry experience.

I drew up my horse, and watched this curiosity for a few minutes, with a fowl-admirer's wonder. It was evidently a _hen_, though the variety was new to me, and its deportment was very remarkable. Her plumage was a shiny coal-black, and she loitered upon a bright-green bank in the sunshine, at the southerly side of a pretty house that stood a few yards back from the road. She was rather long-legged, and "spindle-shanked,"

but she moved about skippingly and briskly, as if she were treading upon thin egg-sh.e.l.ls. Her feet were very delicate and very narrow, and her body was thin and trim; but her plumage--that glossy, jet-black, brilliant feathery habit--was "too much" for my then excited "fancy"

for beautiful birds; and I thought I had never seen a tip-top fowl before.

As I gazed and wondered, this bird observed me coquettishly, and, raising herself slightly a tip-toe, she flapped her bright wings ludicrously, opened her pretty mouth, and sent forth a _crow_ so clear and sharp, and so utterly defiant and plucky, that I laughed outright in her face. I did. I couldn't help it.

She noticed my merriment, and instantly flap went those glittering wings again, and another shout--a very shriek of a crow, a termagant yell of a crow--rang forth piercingly from the lungs of my sable but beautiful inamorata.

This second crow was full of fire, and daring, and challenge, and percussion. It seemed to say, as plainly as words could have uttered it, "Who are _you_? What you after? Wouldn't you like to cage _me_ up--_s-a-y_?"

I laughed again, wondered more, stared, and shouted "Bravo! Milady, you _are_ a rum 'un, to be sure!" And again she hopped up and crowed bravely, sharply, maliciously, wildly, marvellously.

I was puzzled. I had heard of such animals before. I had read in the newspapers about Woman's Rights conventions. I had seen it stated that hens occasionally were found that "crowed like a c.o.c.k." But I had never seen one before. This _was_ an extraordinary bird, evidently.

There it went again! That same shrill; crashing, challenging crow, from the gullet of the ebon beauty before me. O, _what_ a crow was that, my countrymen! I resolved to possess this bird, at any cost. And I was soon in communication with the gentleman who then had her.

"Is this _your_ hen, sir?" I inquired. And I think the gentleman suspected me, instanter.

"Yes," he answered. "That is, I support her."

"Will you sell her?"

"No--no, sir."

"I will give you ten dollars for her."

Crack! Crash! Whew! went that crow, again. I was electrified.

"I'll give you fifteen----"

"No, sir."

"Twenty dollars, then."

"No."

"What will you take for her?"

"Hark!" he replied. "Isn't that music? Isn't that heavenly?"

"What _is_ that?" I asked, eagerly.

"My hen."

"What is she doing?"

"Singing," said the gentleman.

"Beautiful!" I responded. "I will give you forty dollars for her."

"Take her," replied her keeper. "She is yours."

"What breed is it?" I inquired.

"Spanker," said the gentleman, "but rare. It is one of Ellett's importation--genuine."

"Remarkable pullet!" I ventured.

"Hen, sir, _hen_," insisted the stranger.

I paid him forty dollars down, and seized my prize, though she proved hard to catch.

"She's much like the Frenchman's flea, sir," said her previous possessor. "Put your finger on her, and she's never there. Feed her well, however, keep her in good quarters, let her do as she pleases, and she'll always crow--always, sir. Hear _that_? You can't stop her, unless you stop her breath. She always crows and sings. There it is again!

Isn't that a crow, for a hen--eh?"

It was, indeed.

"Good-day," said the Brookline gentleman, quietly pocketing his money.

"f.a.n.n.y will please you, I've no doubt."

"f.a.n.n.y?" I queried.

"Yes; I call her '_f.a.n.n.y Fern_,'" said the stranger to me, as I entered my wagon; and, half an hour afterwards, my forty-dollar c.o.c.k-hen, "f.a.n.n.y Fern," was crowing again furiously, l.u.s.tily, magnificently, on the bright-green lawn beneath my own parlor-windows.

"f.a.n.n.y" proved a thorough trump. Bantams, Games, Cochins, Dorkings, Shanghaes, Bother'ems, were _no_where when "f.a.n.n.y" was round. She could outcrow the l.u.s.tiest feathered orchestra ever collected together in Christendom. She was a wonder, that redoubtable but frisky, flashy, sprightly, sputtery, s.p.u.n.ky "f.a.n.n.y Fern."

And didn't the boys run after her? Well, they did! And didn't they want to buy her? Didn't they bid high for her, at last? Didn't everybody flock to see her, and to hear "f.a.n.n.y" crow? And _didn't_ she continue to crow, too? Ah! it was heaven, indeed (and sometimes the other thing), to listen to "f.a.n.n.y's" voice.

When "f.a.n.n.y" opened her mouth, everybody held their breath and listened.

"f.a.n.n.y" crowed to some purpose, verily! She crowed l.u.s.tily against oppression, and vice, and wrong, and injustice; and she crowed aloud (with her best strength) in behalf of injured innocence, and virtue, and merit, exalted or humble.

And, finally, "f.a.n.n.y" hatched a brace of chickens; and _didn't_ she crow for and over _them_? She now cackled and scratched, and crowed harder and louder and shriller than ever. The people stopped in the street to listen to her; old men heard her; young men sought after her; all the women began to "swear" by her; the children thronged to see her; the newspapers all talked about her; and thousands of books were printed about my charming, astonishing, remarkable, crowing "f.a.n.n.y Fern."

I sent her to the fowl-shows, where she "took 'em all down" clean, and invariably carried away the first premium in her cla.s.s. Never was such a hen seen, before or since. I was offered a hundred, two hundred, five hundred dollars for her. I was poor; but didn't I own this hen "f.a.n.n.y,"--the extraordinary, wonderful, magnificent, coal-black, bl.u.s.tering, but inapproachable and world-defying "f.a.n.n.y"?

"I will give you _eight_ hundred dollars for her," said a publisher to me, one day. "I want to put her in a book. She's a wonder! a star of the first magnitude! a diamond without blemish! a G.o.d-send to the world in 1854!"

At this moment "f.a.n.n.y" crowed.

"Will you take eight hundred?" screamed the publisher, jumping nearly to the ceiling.