Rensselaer Union and Jasper Republican, Volume 8, Number 38, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 8 June 1876 — Master Bilderback’s Experience in Poultry keeping. [ARTICLE]

Master Bilderback’s Experience in Poultry keeping.

If there was anything she abominated morC than one thing, Mrs. Bilderback said, with some warmth, it was another, and that wa» chickens. And she resolutely protested against keeping any of them about the place. She wanted to keep a few flowers this year, and she wasn’t going to be mortified again, as she was last summer, by having every woman who called at that house smile at the forest of bare stalks and scraggy branches that stood for the collection of house plaijts that she and her daughter tried to raise for ornaments to the place, but which were really of no use except to fill the crops of a lot of long-legged hungry chickens. And for a long time the good lady held out stoutly against the chicken proposition, but was at lust over-argued and over-persuaded, and gave her unwilling consent for Master Bilderback to keep three dozen chickens, the party of the second part binding himself to keep tire table supplied witli fresh eggs and spring chickens, and to keep all hens, roosters and all .voting chickens of unknown sex, but of sufficient physical development to scratch, out of the' front yard and away from the flower beds. This contract Master Bilderback placed himself under heavy bonds to carry out, by saying “honest injtui,” “pon nonuor” aiid_2kff.W. iny heartv” -and repeated this awful and impressive formula, he went sedately out ot the room and immediately threw himself down on a verbena bed, where he pounded the ground with his heels in the ecstacy of his joy In due-time—the new hen-house was completed, and Mr. Bilderback, breathing maledictions on the wretches who pulled the pickets off his frontfence for kindling wofitr’W'ffiSf Wdtnmr 'botmtory repaired before he noticed that the aperturesin the fence corresponded to certain neat looking improvements on the hennery. The house was stocked rather slowly, for it was part of the contract which Mrs. Bilderbhck had drawn that he party of the second part should purchase his own stock. It was noticeable that Master Bilderback’s taste ran greatly toward gamy-looking roosters, and as the perches in the hennery became more and more populated, the outlook for fresh eggs and spring chickens became very discouraging indeed. The first fowl the poulterer brought home was a gaunt Hamburg with one eye and a gameleg but beautifully spangled, which interesting bird" Master Bilderback informed his sister was the worst pill, in the box, and had lost his eye while fighting a cow. The next day he traded a pocket-full of marbles for a little bantam that crowed twenty-four hours a day, could slip through a seasoned crack in .a warped board, and could dig a hole in the middle of a flower bed that you could bury a calf in. There wasn’t a moment’s Silence about the house after the bantam’s arrival,.for when he was pot fighting the Hamburg^which was only when that valiairf but prudent bird got up on top of the house and hid behind a chimney, he was wandering through the house trying his voice in the different rooms, or standing on the front porch issuing proclamations of defiance to all roosters- to whom those presents might come greeting. A day or two after the bantam’s arrival Master Bilderback traded his knife for a Black Spanish rooster with a broken wing. The Spaniard when put in the coop proceeded at once to clean out the disheartened Hamburg, who fought on the tactics which had so often proved of so great value to him, and amazed his furious antagonist by the briskness with which he got out of the-coop, upon the barn, and perched himself on the restless and uncertain weathercock. The Spaniard and the bantam then had it until neither of them could stand; the pacific Hamburg improved the opportunity to come down and partake of the first, square meal he had eaten since the new boarders had come to the-house. Two days later Master Bilderback brought home a vile-looking white rooster with no tail feathers, his comb sheared off close to his head, and spurs as long as your thumb, a vile plebeian of a rooster, without a line or pedigree, of no particular strain, except a strain that made his very eyes turn red wlpm be growled, and which he had bought for an old base-ball club. But the nameless stranger amazed the proprietor of the henery by waltzing into the establishment with a terrific rooster oath, and followed it up by kicking the Bantam clear out ol his mind, jerking the wattles off the Spaniard, and chasing the persecuted Hamburg clear up the side of the house. This was the last addition made to the happy family for some time, Mr. Bilderback declaring that he was not going to have his premises turned into a cock-pit, and Master Bilderback was sternly forbidden to arrange any more meetings li the alley witli other boys and their birds. But day before yesterday, when Master Bilderback came home from school, it was evident that he had made a trade. He had some other boy’s shabby old hat on his head, and there wasn’t A lead piece of string, pistol cartridge, top, fishhook, chalk-line, marble, dime novel, or street-car ticket in his pockets, and he had a new rooster, the crowning glory of the vast collection of fowls that were to furnish forth his mother’s table with fresh eggs—and—spring—ch icfcemf"—lt “wns-a Shanghai; young one, Master Bilderback said, as he prepared to untie its legs and wings, and introduce it to its new home; hadn’t got its growth yet but he-was a buster. And Mrs. Bilderback thought he W’as. When he was untied he stood up and flapped One of his wings in his proprietor’s face, until that young gentleman was ready to “ cross his heart” thatsomebody had hit him witli a clapboard. Amt before he"fiad recovered from the effects of this blow the noble bird kie.ked him under the chin and darted off toward the front yard,with—prodigious strides. He uttered most an awful croak as he neat'lkl Mrs. Bilderback, who was trying to get out of his way, and in a vain attempt to fly lover her, he struck her on the head, justlabaft her ear with his heel, gently dropping her; “grassed the old lady,” Master Bilderback afterward explained to his “like a shot." The wretched bird paused as he passed the sitting-room window’, which was just about on a level with his head when he stooped, to look in and make some unintelligible remark in a gUtttiral tone of language, and snatching up a new tidy that Miss Bilderback was at work upon, swallowed it anil, passed on. Wherever he trod he smashed a house-plant, and whenever he croaked he threw somebody into a fit. He metMr. Bilderback as he suddenly turned the comer of the house, ran against the old gentleman with a wild kind of a crow that sounded like a steamboat whistle .with a bad cold, and as he trampled over that good man’s prostrate form be plucked off his neck-tie and swallowed it. Then he wheeled around and straddled into the sitting-room window, and before he could head him out of the house lie swallowed two spooled oFcotton, a tack hammer, a set of false teeth belonging to. Mrs.

Bilderback, a cake es toilet soap, a shoe . buttoner.'a ball of yarn, an arctic overshoe, and finally choked on a photograph album which flew open when it was about ; half way down. The bird is still at large roaming around South Hill, but Master j Bilderback’s hennery is empty ami lone- I some, because nis parents are for some i unaccountable reason bitterly prejudiced ! against keeping chickens. — Jlurlingtvn j Hawk-Eye.