Fort Worth gazette. [volume] (Fort Worth, Tex.) 1891-1898, 1891-09-24

| farmer who peltS her with sticks and clodS
and beef bones, for she is not built that
way, but she will fill with eggs the hat of
| that farmer who so numerically treats her,
| and not appear to think at all hard of it.
No moro eloquent eulogy could be passed
upon the hen than to say, and say it cor
rectly, that she is the friend of everybody
on the place where she lives, moves and has
| her being. There may be persons who do
not at all like her. but what of that? 1t is
not always the most deserving that are the
most liked. The most useful and the most
worthy of kindest consideration, even
| among the higher orders of creation, are
| too often found in the same boat with the
| hen. They are necessarily prosecuted by
| those who derive the greatest benefits from
| them.
A farmer will often throw club at the
| hen and knock her silly if he catches her in
| the hog pen appropriating the shattered
| grain, aud as soon as she RECEIVERS from the
| effects of the shock she will run straight to
| to straw stack and lay him an egg. If he
| should happen to kill her in his senseless
| fit of rage, he at once turns and eats her.
Another phase of the poultry interest is
| its relation 10 the income of the farmers
| family. The famers (many of them toler-
| ate poultry on the farm only as necessary
evil. They have no words of commenda-
| ton for the said poultry under any circum-
stances or conditions.
A farmer will sit down at the table at
| Easter and eat fourteen boiled eggs, and
never think of the source from whence they
came 1t is at this time of the year that he
! least appreciates the poultry, though then
| it is the most valuable to him. He drinks
six cups of coffee bought by the labor of
the hens. He sweetens it with sugar
bought with the product of the hen. He
puts little extra salt and pepper upon his
boiled egg bought with the fruit of the hen.
He complains because the biscuits have not
enough soda in them, though the good wife
has a new can of soda left from her last deal
with the huckster. He never looks at his
| wife's new dress, bought by the hen, until
she asks him to. She presents him with
new straw hat bought by the hen, but he
only claps it on his head and says gruffiy,
''Too big" The other day he needed
scythe-stone. The good woman and the old
hen conspired to purchase it for him. He
takes 1t, turns it over, and says, HIN!
glad We thought Of it." He puts on his new
straw hat and goes out into the garden to
hoe awhile. 1t is full of hens, all indus
triously at work among the vegetables. To
work among the vegetables is what he went
out there for. But when he sees the hens
at work he wakes red in the face and seizes
an armfull of bricks and stones and starts
on the run with shoo-oo-oo! and other ex-
pressive EXPLANATIONS not allowed to pass
through the mails, that would scare an
army mule away from his oats. The hens
skedaddle and raise q musical concert that
would make new brass band die of re-
morse. The hens fly towards the fence;
they reach it; they go over it, through it,
under it, and are soon lost in the dark green
Businesses OF the young wheat field or the
cotton patch, where they hide away to de-
vote an hour or so in wishing they were
dead, and wondering how long it will be ere
they merge into that particular condition
without the trouble of wishing. And yet,
after all this hard usage, they are in many
cases the most profitable stock on the farm
when the amount of money invested in them
is considered.
Turn over I new leaf from this time for
ward, friendly farmer, is the earnest ad-
vice of the Southern Cultivator. If you
didn't want hens to work in your garden
whose fault is it that they were there? Did
you tell them not to go there, and if so, had
you taught them to understand plain En-
glish, or whatever language you speak, be-
fore issuing your mandate? If they are
not SO taught, had you placed before them
any ukase to the same effect couched in
such hieroglyphics as they could not help
understanding, such, for instance, as we'll
built picket fence around your vegetable
patch2 Your hens would have honored
that kind of order, every little hen of them.
But as it is, how do you know that they
were aware of any confiiction with your
will by scratching up a few grubs and cut
worms in your garden Be reasonable.
Act like an intelligent heing and give the
hen her Just dues.