Читать книгу The Four-Masted Cat-Boat, and Other Truthful Tales онлайн

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“Poultry-raising would be an unmixed joy,” said he, as he picked a turnip and offered it to me, “if a fellow wasn’t constantly running up against this lack of instinct on the part of the fowls. If a hen had instinct she’d know enough to keep her mouth shut when she laid an egg; but as it is, she cackles away like a woman with a secret, and before she knows it her egg is on the way to the table. But the aim of our company will be to furnish each hen with a sufficient amount of instinct to render her profitable to her master. When she has that instinct she will not sit on her nest long after her eggs have been removed; she will not walk off through the long grass, calling to her brood to follow her, when the chicks have all been swallowed by the treacherous domestic cat; and she will not do the thousand and one things that any hen, no matter what her breed or breeding, will do, as it is.”

I told Mr. Stockton, as I shook hands with him in parting, that there was not a farmer, either amateur or professional, in the whole Union, who would not be glad to purchase a package of his instinct-powders; and as I left the genial granger, he was putting cushions under his watermelons so that they would not get bruised by contact with the earth.