best way to raise the Black Spanish fowl is to go late in the evening and
raise coop and all. The reason I recommend this method is that, the
birds being so valuable, the owners do not permit them to roost around
promiscuously, they put them in a coop as strong as a fireproof safe and
keep it in the kitchen at night. The method I speak of is not always a
bright and satisfying success, and yet there are so many little articles
of vertu about a kitchen, that if you fail on the coop you can generally
bring away something else. I brought away a nice steel trap one night,
worth ninety cents.
But what is the use in my pouring out my whole intellect on this subject?
I have shown the Western New York Poultry Society that they have taken to
their bosom a party who is not a spring chicken by any means, but a man
who knows all about poultry, and is just as high up in the most efficient
methods of raising it as the president of the institution himself.
I thank these gentlemen for the honorary membership they have conferred
upon me, and shall stand at all times ready and willing to testify my
good feeling and my official zeal by deeds as well as by this hastily
penned advice and information. Whenever they are ready to go to raising
poultry, let them call for me any evening after eleven o’clock,
EXPERIENCE OF THE McWILLIAMSES WITH MEMBRANOUS CROUP
[As related to the author of this book by Mr. McWilliams, a pleasant New
York gentleman whom the said author met by chance on a journey.]
Well, to go back to where I was before I digressed to explain to you how
that frightful and incurable disease, membranous croup,[Diphtheria D.W.]
was ravaging the town and driving all mothers mad with terror, I called
Mrs. McWilliams’s attention to little Penelope, and said:
“Darling, I wouldn’t let that child be chewing that pine stick if I were
you.”
“Precious, where is the harm in it?” said she, but at the same time
preparing to take away the stick for women cannot receive even the most
palpably judicious suggestion without arguing it, that is married women.
I replied:
“Love, it is notorious that pine is the least nutritious wood that a
child can eat.”
My wife’s hand paused, in the act of taking the stick, and returned
itself to her lap. She bridled perceptibly, and said:
“Hubby, you know better than that. You know you do. Doctors all say
that the turpentine in pine wood is good for weak back and the kidneys.”
“Ah–I was under a misapprehension. I did not know that the child’s
kidneys and spine were affected, and that the family physician had
recommended–”
“Who said the child’s spine and kidneys were affected?”
“My love, you intimated it.”
“The idea! I never intimated anything of the kind.”
“Why, my dear, it hasn’t been two minutes since you said–”
“Bother what I said! I don’t care what I did say. There isn’t any harm
in the child’s chewing a bit of pine stick if she wants to, and you know
it perfectly well. And she shall chew it, too. So there, now!”
“Say no more, my dear. I now see the force of your reasoning, and I will
go and order two or three cords of the best pine wood to-day. No child
of mine shall want while I–”
“Oh, please go along to your office and let me have some peace. A body
can never make the simplest remark but you must take it up and go to
arguing and arguing and arguing till you don’t know what you are talking
about, and you never do.”
“Very well, it shall be as you say. But there is a want of logic in your
last remark which–”
However, she was gone with a flourish before I could finish, and had
taken the child with her. That night at dinner she confronted me with a
face a white as a sheet:
“Oh, Mortimer, there’s another! Little Georgi Gordon is taken.”
“Membranous croup?”
“Membranous croup.”
“Is there any hope for him?”