The Pacific commercial advertiser. [volume] (Honolulu, Hawaiian Islands) 1885-1921, 1905-11-26

wearing her clothes and a face with
lust the right proportion Of GOOD
Judgment and sentiment in its ex-
preston leaned over the luncheon
table the other day, and inspired by
some chicken potpie like that which
mother still makes said with decision:
There comes a time in the life OF
everybody who is subjected day after
dav to the ceaseless grind of business
life in a, great city when the desire 10
seek the farm and make money by
raising chickens is overmasterlng.
That desire might be catalogued among
fayorite diseases of New Workers.
"There is only one way to render
yourself immune, and that is to try 1t.
Personally I took one year out OF my
life for the experiment, and just as L
reached the paying basis destiny clos
ed that page in my career. But there
are times when I feel that l must raise
my voice in protest against the IDEA
that raising chickens is an easy thing
and that if you have a few dollars all
YOU have got to do is to start in and
become a millionaire.
II was led to my doom by story
which I read in a ma gazine. It told
how one woman cleared $4,000 the first
year at raising chickens. There was
a picture of the woman throwing corn
gayly in the air while the ground was
covered with chickens. In the corner
of the picture, indicating a side line,
was a, vision of some Belgian hares.
ct showed the picture to sister and
ia ElxvGg
with chicken pamphlets and for weeks
fed our young minds on the lurid liter
ature of incubators. Finally we
packed up and went back to the farm
on Staten Island, where father and
mother were spending their declining
years in the peace that comes to the
middleaged.
1--WE announced our purpose to be-
come miIlionaires and exercised squat
ter sovereignty on the land. Then we
went to town and purchased an in
cubator.
1--WE spent s25 for it. it was the best
of its kind. Then we purchased some
eggs and paid rs cents apiece for them,
for we had decided to have no second
rate chickens to look at us reproach-
fully.
ION our way home we stopped to in
form an uncle who has an office in
Broad street what he had missed in
not having treated US better, left our
eggs on the steam radiator while we
unfolded to him our intention of erect
ing an Italian villa with our first
years profits, and did not discover that
our eggs were half cooked until later
developments in the incubator aroused
our suspicious. That was our first
failure.
Incidentally, I might mention that
when we bought the incubator we also
invested in about a dozen articles for
which we never had any use-cute lit
tie drinking fountains, neat lit
tie baskets that the hens were going
to lay in after we had Matched them,
and other things which a beguiling
shopkeeper induced US to purchase.
1.-THE incubator was constructed for
a hundred eggs, and our second pur-
chase of the common or garden variety
filled it. Then we waited, like the wise
virgins keeping the lamps burning, and
that in itself was no mean task, until
the eggs began to hatch. Of that first
hundred we Matched about three-quar-
tiers, and we thought our troubles were
over
Were they? I remember reading in
one of the pamphlets whose author had
moments of an ingrowing conscience:
God help the invalid woman or the
sick man who tries to raise chickens!
1t seemed to me then just an exaggera-
ton, but whoever wrote it ought to
have a special paragraph devoted to
the wonderful restraint of his style.
THE nights we spent sleepy, dis
| gusted, heartsick, watching those
| chickens!' There are just one million
| different ways that an incubator chick
| en- can die, and as soon as he is born
| he knows them all. OF course the
| pamphlet left off at their birth and we
| knew nothing of what followed. OF
| that first hundred two chickens sur
vived the first week.
| Our next venture led US again to
! the incubator establishment, where we
| learned that we should add a brooder
| to our outfit. We added it, and for the
| sake of the uninitiated I will explain
| that brooder consists or runways and
| sun parlors and places to feed in, sup
| posed to be kept at different tempera-
! lures, 80 that when a chicken prefers
to roast to death in the glassed portion
| he can do so, or if he likes the old
Fashioned method of strangling by his
brothers aid he can do that in another
| part. The brooder added to our trou-
bIes by making them more complex
| About this time I was taken over a
| perfect incubating plant which was
| run for the benefit of the late Judge
! Hilton, and the manager showed me
all its wonderful arrangements and
gave me the result Of his many years
| experience, which was briefly that no
one could raise chickens profitably on
| the incubating plan with a capital of
| less than $4,000 to start with. I had
reached the point in my own endeavor
where it was very easy to believe this.
| one thing l had learned perfectly,
| that whoever Matched the first chick
ems by putting the hen on the eggs
| knew what he was ahout A hon hoe