The morning news. [volume] (Savannah, Ga.) 1887-1900, 1892-01-31
Knox on Cacklers.

great mistake IL 10 IS Instinct that iuCites
her to cackle. Now II "A hen would wait
until she has laid a number Of eggs and has
sat upon them and as a result is surrounded
by brood of chickens. there would be
some reason why she should cackle aud |
Tor one would approve of her boasti1g OF
her material status Just as much as she
pleased
We who are endowed with reason, or fat
ter ourselves that we are, can see the folly
OF the premature Boosting Of the hen. The
idlotic bird has only taken the initial step
toward the great work Of producing others
OF ber kind; yet she Is so proud OF this that
she must prance around and announce to
her little barnyard world " hat a tremendous
thing she has done. She acts as IL the lay
ing or an egg was wonderful, aud much
20 De lauded, feat, and as II she was the
only domestic fowl that had ever ac~
complished it.
The hen IL never taught to lower the
volume OF her cackle a single note. by the
fact that It causes the hired girl TO emerge
from her lair, seize the fruit Of the hens
labor, bear IL off. aud transform it into an
omelette or inject 1t into the lung Of a
custard pie.
Nature evidently proposed that the egg
should become chicken, and certainly
never intended that it should be used TO
discourage a stump speaker. or to flavor a
glntizz. Then why did nature defeat her
purpose by giving the hen a cackle and
allow her to use it as she does!
merely put the question. / cannot an
swer it,
1t has occurred to me, and possibly it
has TO you, that it is not hens al me that
cackle. Many men and women parade
around, hold high their heads, and boast
and cackle when they have only taken the
first step toward doing something that they
think is wonderful or creditable. Often
thnra ia less for h., O., ka
hen. That unreasonable bird actually does
something definite before she begins to
cackle. The reasoning animal man, often
cackles when he has conceived an idea, be-
fore the idea is actually born. and long be-
fore he has made the first move in fur
therance OF the scheme to be worked or the
thing TO be done.
The result OF cackling is about as uufort-
innate in the case of the man as il is in that
of the hen. The egg he has laid, and to
which he has loudly called attention, may
be appropriated by some one else
1t is we'll for the inventor to be reticent
until he has received notice from Washing
| ton that his patent is allowed.
have never known a playwright who
wasn't more or less Of a cackler. They
cackle over their plots and situations, and
| sometimes before they have Matched the
| plots or developed the situations some good
friend eppropriates them, and, carrying
them off TO quiet corner, sits down and
incubates them while he winks the other
eye.
o, indeed, yes. / have known it done.
I'm somewhat of a cackler myself, and as
n result, some of my eggs have been vica-
riously Matched.
The worst of all the cackIers are those
who cackle not over what they have done,
but over what they are going TO do, and
other people sometimes suffer as result
Of hnfr oil Al
timbrel, and loot the base bazoo, as soon
as they conceive an idea. They say, al
am going to do this" and II am going to do
that" They keep on talking. but they
never do this" and they never do that
The result is that other and more capable
mon, who would have done the proposed
thing well, are prevented.
Derision and ridicule are heaped upon the
man of the community that caokles prema-
turely- When Koch announced that he
had discovered a consumption cure, he
cackled sooner than he should and 80 did
the man who said he had built an airship.
that would make an ariel trip across the
Atlantic; and 50 did the man who claimed
that he could shake the juice out OF a cloud
with howitzer; and so did many others
from Goliath, whose braggart vaporings in
the valley Of Elah cost him bis head, to
Cara, whose bostful cacklings just now, on
the plaius Of Texas. will surely bring him TO
grief. Ts
When the people of New York said they
would build a 81 100000 monument above
the grave of our great soldier President,
they tapped their wings and vibrated their
vocal cords much too soon. '
And some of our newspapers; how they
do cackle and strut, and make as much
noise when they discovered mares nest,
as they do when they really hatch out an
idea or give birth to a suggestion of int-in-
sic worth The reporter of the Daily Blast
finds a shoesrIng close 70 the scene
of a murder. With this important clew"
he PUSHES around and does some extraor-
binary detective work. In an effort to find
a man wearing II shoe that the string will
fit. he writes and publishes columns de-
scriptive OF his quest for the murderer, and
he accompanies his descrip ions by engrav-
ings of the shoe string, both full
face view and profile. He inter views
people who could not have had any connec-
ton with the crime, and he prints alleged
portraits of them. He finds a man who
acknowledges that he sold the deceased
ton OF coal in the winter of 1888, and he
gets the Blasts own special and exclusive
artist to draw from life, nice little black
and white picture of ton Of the same kind
of coal He mysterlously hints at import
ant evidence in his possession, and promises
great developments in next mornings issue
The editor, editorIally. cackles half
column cackle over the enterprise that the
Daily Blast has exhibited in exclusively
working up the shoestring Glow. He calls it
scoop-and the scoop is the only thing
connected with the affair that is not illus
trated-everything else, from the mort
gage on the dead mans house to the smell
of his cooks breath, is photographed, and
reproduced in the Blast, with astonishing
iufidelity to nature. and the editor cackles
some more as he intimates that the public
may safely rely on the Blast camping out
on the trail Of the murderer until he is
brought to bay. The murderer declines to
bay, however, aud the Blasts shoestring
clew is never Matched.
Even when the Blast wades through slime
and dirt, and. sneaking around sur
reptitiousy through back doors, interviews
the menials of a correspondent in divorce
suit. it has the indecency to cackle over the
publication Of a scullions little tattle.
l do not mean to that such paper is a
representative modern journal, but It's true
that such papers do exist, and pity It's, tits
true"
need not mention the legislator who,
originating q bill. cackcles aud cackles
about It, even before IL gets the length of
being laid-on the table; or the author who
oaokles about the book he has just been de-
ivered of, a book that is not yet out OF the
bindery. No, l need not specify the whole
list of caoklers. for you have met some of
them often. OF course, you have.
Keep your eyes and ears open, and you