Mineral Point tribune. (Mineral Point, Wis.) 1869-1938, 1874-08-13

! eliminated in the form OF bipedy
| 1t is quite laughable after all to note
how this mighty philosophers mind,
magnificent steamship, its engine at full
speed, every paddle padding and every
| flag flying, dashed on only to founder in
| the fog bank Of missing links, while my
frail barque, my fragile canoe. as it were,
dances with fairy-like velocity over
delusive deeps and dangerous rapids and
| anchors safe on the sunny shores of per
| feet satisfaction; SO l fret no more with
regard to my down-coming. Beautiful
thought! l know whence came, and
don't trace either myself or my father
Adam back to an ape, either.
Oh! what great reason have to be
| thankful for the endowment of an eX-
uberant fancy. All hail to it! 1t has
led me through labyrinths from whose
very verge reason would shrink appalled,,
but Darwin discovered this before did.
| And now that have found the imme-
date heretofore link of my being, am
ready to receive honOrs rendered by any
scientific society, any royal academy in
| Christendom
! lam strong in the faith and free to
maintain that the human family is de-
scended from the common barn-door
fowl. Absurd, do you say?-oh, beloved
friends, don't you know that to establish
any theory in this world, the more alb
surd it seems at first glance the better;
but the wings and feathers, you say;
pin-feather for such objections; are not
we but little lower than the angelsg now
isn't that orthodox, and haven't orthodox
angels wingsg-there.
Even as Paul argued the truth of his
new doctrine before the refined and
learned Athenians by reminding them of
what certain of their own poets had
said so let me refer to some of the pop
ular opinions and oft-fepeated adages of
our fathers in support of this most mag
niticent idea for which stand RESPONSE
BILE.
Barn door fowls have two, and but two,
| legs; and besides, what was Plato's def
milton of mana biped without feathers
and what did Diogenes prove by his
| students prank of plucking chicken,
| thrusting it in the great professors face
and calling out, Here is Plato's man"g
"He builded better than he knew" that
great old cynic, and brought before the
world a fact in the masquerade of fancy.
The male bird wears spurs and men do
so, too. The hen wears comb and
women copy her in it. Both roosters and
hens scratch for living; do we not all
the same? and hard scratching it takes
for some of us. Then, too, the roost-
er is ain-glorious, overbearing,
lordly, strutting creature to such
a degree that when we would
describe an over-important lord of crea-
ton we say he thinks himself cock of
the walk.
The hen in her youthful days is pert
and proud as fair maidens are apt to be;
in maturity she is matronly and Gemure,
or she is unendurably filssy The say
ing cross as setting hen, restless as
hen on hot griddle,' or "floppng
about like a hen with her head off," is APP
piled to the fussy and ill-natured or the
| restless and unsettled of womankind with
vexatious frequency.
| And there is q likeness in hen mothers
| and woman mothers in this they both
| fondle and scold their young, they both
seek to lead them into safe and pleasant
places, they fear they will be drowned
when they venture into water, and alike
they warn them to beware Of hawks
A common expression for cowardly
man is chicken hearted, and, contrairi-
wise, brave woman, one who from a
rostrum addresses a multitude, is desig
mated "a growing hen" But no man ever
land men have written most of our adages)
no man ever yet embodied the fact in
atelling aphorism that roosteris apt to
cackle as much over the egg he has not
laid as the hen cackles who laid it. For
centuries vain beau has been termed a
coxcomb, and when your opponent puts
on defiant air you say he is rutfling
his feathers"
To express true grit or pluck we say
of our village rowdy, rather inelegantly,
admit: He has sand in his crop"
| In both the fowl and the human fam
| lily the presentation of bills is the cause
of much excitement, and vexation, and
| discord, and bother. And yet, oh! is not
the term chen pecked" of greater
| significance than they all? And
| the writer of this paper once
had the fountain of her feelings
rolled back, like a wild Alpine
| torrent, on her heart in this wise: she
had ventured some well-meaning adj
vice, some sisterly counsel to a younger
brother, though he was not aspiring
chicken" either, and was abruptly told
in answer mot to fret her giZzard."
| Several passages of Scripture might
be brought to bear on this subject, but
what scientist would not prefer some
thing vague and farfetched to aught
that could be quoted from that old-fash
| Toned volume?
| Perhaps my most ancient help is
Esop, who, out of his 40 fables, devotes
but one to the ape and six to the lordly
game fowl A wise person was Esop
And glorious Shake peare has his
| Macduff to exclaim, What all my
pretty chickens" etc. Could better evil
dence than this be wished for, When
the deeps of his heart were broken up
with the oyerpoWering emotion of q