Democratic Sentinel, Volume 16, Number 28, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 29 July 1892 — SaD Partings. [ARTICLE]

SaD Partings.

In an amusing account of her farming difficulties, Kate Sanborn recounts her struggles in raising poultry, and gives an appalling list of the nlaladies to which hen-flesh is heir. Eten with the conquest of these preliminary trials, however, difficulties do not cease, for, having raised the chickens from helpless babyhood to such a stage that they have become family pets, parting with thorn proves wellnigh unendurable. It is a hard and slow struggle to get my chickens killed. I say, in an off-hand manner, with assumed nonchalance: “Ellen, I want Tom to kill a rooster at once for to-morrow’s dinner, and I have an order from a friend for four more; so he must select five tonight.” Then begins the trouble. “Oh,” pleads Ellen, “don’t kill dear Dick! poor, dear Dick! That is Tom’s pet of all; so big and handsome, and knows so much! He will jump up on Tom’s shoulder and eat out of his hand, and come when he calls. And those big Brahmas, don’t you- know how they were brought up by hand, as you might say, and they know me, and hang around the door for crumbs; and that beauty of a Wyandotte, you couldn’t eat him!” When the matter is decided, and guillotining is going on. Eden and I sit listening to the ax-thuds and the death-squawks, while she wrings her hands saying: “Oh, dearie me! what a world this is! What a thing to look into, that we must kill the poor innocents to eat them. And they were so tame and cunning, and would follow me all round!”