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Sunset light glints off what looks like the bright gold Dome of the Rock -- but the horizon is in Kabul, and the dome is a replica recently inaugurated in the Afghan capital."This mosque was

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It’s a hot day at Etiwanda High School and the bright sun glints off broken shards of glass in the parking lot. The day before Etiwanda fell 35-7 to Rancho Cucamonga, rangy Dermicarus Davis was easy to spot while running plays.

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Glints

glints

Tales of the Jazz Age by F. Scott Fitzgerald, is part of the HackerNoon Books Series. You can jump to any chapter in this book . TARQUIN OF CHEAPSIDE here TARQUIN OF CHEAPSIDE Running footsteps—light, soft-soled shoes made of curious leathery cloth brought from Ceylon setting the pace; thick flowing boots, two pairs, dark blue and gilt, reflecting the moonlight in blunt gleams and splotches, following a stone’s throw behind. Soft Shoes flashes through a patch of moonlight, then darts into a blind labyrinth of alleys and becomes only an intermittent scuffle ahead somewhere in the enfolding darkness. In go Flowing Boots, with short swords lurching and long plumes awry, finding a breath to curse God and the black lanes of London. Soft Shoes leaps a shadowy gate and crackles through a hedgerow. Flowing Boots leap the gate and crackles through the hedgerow—and there, startlingly, is the watch ahead—two murderous pikemen of ferocious cast of mouth acquired in Holland and the Spanish marches. But there is no cry for help. The pursued does not fall panting at the feet of the watch, clutching a purse; neither do the pursuers raise a hue and cry. Soft Shoes goes by in a rush of swift air. The watch curse and hesitate, glance after the fugitive, and then spread their pikes grimly across the road and wait for Flowing Boots. Darkness, like a great hand, cuts off the even flow the moon. The hand moves off the moon whose pale caress finds again the eaves and lintels, and the watch, wounded and tumbled in the dust. Up the street one of Flowing Boots leaves a black trail of spots until he binds himself, clumsily as he runs, with fine lace caught from his throat. It was no affair for the watch: Satan was at large tonight and Satan seemed to be he who appeared dimly in front, heel over gate, knee over fence. Moreover, the adversary was obviously travelling near home or at least in that section of London consecrated to his coarser whims, for the street narrowed like a road in a picture and the houses bent over further and further, cooping in natural ambushes suitable for murder and its histrionic sister, sudden death. Down long and sinuous lanes twisted the hunted and the harriers, always in and out of the moon in a perpetual queen’s move over a checker-board of glints and patches. Ahead, the quarry, minus his leather jerkin now and half blinded by drips of sweat, had taken to scanning his ground desperately on both sides. As a result he suddenly slowed short, and retracing his steps a bit scooted up an alley so dark that it seemed that here sun and moon had been in eclipse since the last glacier slipped roaring over the earth. Two hundred yards down he stopped and crammed himself into a niche in the wall where he huddled and panted silently, a grotesque god without bulk or outline in the gloom. Flowing Boots, two pairs, drew near, came up, went by, halted twenty yards beyond him, and spoke in deep-lunged, scanty whispers: “I was attune to that scuffle; it stopped.” “Within twenty paces.” “He’s hid.” “Stay together now and we’ll cut him up.” The voice faded into a low crunch of a boot, nor did Soft Shoes wait to hear more—he sprang in three leaps across the alley, where he bounded up, flapped for a moment on the top of the wall like a huge bird, and disappeared, gulped down by the hungry night at a mouthful. II “ He read at wine, he read in bed, He read aloud, had he the breath, His every thought was with the dead, ” And so he read himself to death. Any visitor to the old James the First graveyard near Peat’s Hill may spell out this bit of doggerel, undoubtedly one of the worst recorded of an Elizabethan, on the tomb of Wessel Caster. This death of his, says the antiquary, occurred when he was thirty-seven, but as this story is concerned with the night of a certain chase through darkness, we find him still alive, still reading. His eyes were somewhat dim, his stomach somewhat obvious—he was a mis-built man and indolent—oh, Heavens! But an era is an era, and in the reign of Elizabeth, by the grace of Luther, Queen of England, no man could help but catch the spirit of enthusiasm. Every loft in Cheapside published its (or magazine)—of its new blank verse; the Cheapside Players would produce anything on sight as long as it “got away from those reactionary miracle plays,” and the English Bible had run through seven “very large” printings in as many months. Magnum Folium So Wessel Caxter (who in his youth had gone to sea) was now a reader of all on which he could lay his hands—he read manuscripts in holy friendship; he dined rotten poets; he loitered about the shops where the were printed, and he listened tolerantly while the young playwrights wrangled and bickered among them-selves, and behind each other’s backs made bitter and malicious charges of plagiarism or anything else they could think of. Magna Folia To-night he had a book, a piece of work which, though inordinately versed, contained, he thought, some rather excellent political satire. “The Faerie Queene” by Edmund Spenser lay before him under the tremulous candle-light. He had ploughed through a canto; he was beginning another: The Legend of Britomartis or of Chastity It falls me here to write of Chastity. .... The fayrest vertue, far above the rest A sudden rush of feet on the stairs, a rusty swing-open of the thin door, and a man thrust himself into the room, a man without a jerkin, panting, sobbing, on the verge of collapse. “Wessel,” words choked him, “stick me away somewhere, love of Our Lady!” Caxter rose, carefully closing his book, and bolted the door in some concern. “I’m pursued,” cried out Soft Shoes. “I vow there’s two short-witted blades trying to make me into mincemeat and near succeeding. They saw me hop the back wall!” “It would need,” said Wessel, looking at him curiously, “several battalions armed with blunderbusses, and two or three Armadas, to keep you reasonably secure from the revenges of the world.” Soft Shoes smiled with satisfaction. His sobbing gasps were giving way to quick, precise breathing; his hunted air had faded to a faintly perturbed irony. “I feel little surprise,” continued Wessel. “They were two such dreary apes.” “Making a total of three.” “Only two unless you stick me away. Man, man, come alive, they’ll be on the stairs in a spark’s age.” Wessel took a dismantled pike-staff from the corner, and raising it to the high ceiling, dislodged a rough trap-door opening into a garret above. “There’s no ladder.” He moved a bench under the trap, upon which Soft Shoes mounted, crouched, hesitated, crouched again, and then leaped amazingly upward. He caught at the edge of the aperture and swung back and forth, for a moment, shifting his hold; finally doubled up and disappeared into the darkness above. There was a scurry, a migration of rats, as the trap-door was replaced;... silence. Wessel returned to his reading-table, opened to the Legend of Britomartis or of Chastity—and waited. Almost a minute later there was a scramble on the stairs and an intolerable hammering at the door. Wessel sighed and, picking up his candle, rose. “Who’s there?” “Open the door!” “Who’s there?” An aching blow frightened the frail wood, splintered it around the edge. Wessel opened it a scarce three inches, and held the candle high. His was to play the timorous, the super-respectable citizen, disgracefully disturbed. “One small hour of the night for rest. Is that too much to ask from every brawler and—” “Quiet, gossip! Have you seen a perspiring fellow?” The shadows of two gallants fell in immense wavering outlines over the narrow stairs; by the light Wessel scrutinized them closely. Gentlemen, they were, hastily but richly dressed—one of them wounded severely in the hand, both radiating a sort of furious horror. Waving aside Wessel’s ready miscomprehension, they pushed by him into the room and with their swords went through the business of poking carefully into all suspected dark spots in the room, further extending their search to Wessel’s bedchamber. “Is he hid here?” demanded the wounded man fiercely. “Is who here?” “Any man but you.” “Only two others that I know of.” For a second Wessel feared that he had been too damned funny, for the gallants made as though to prick him through. “I heard a man on the stairs,” he said hastily, “full five minutes ago, it was. He most certainly failed to come up.” He went on to explain his absorption in “The Faerie Queene” but, for the moment at least, his visitors, like the great saints, were anaesthetic to culture. “What’s been done?” inquired Wessel. “Violence!” said the man with the wounded hand. Wessel noticed that his eyes were quite wild. “My own sister. Oh, Christ in heaven, give us this man!” Wessel winced. “Who is the man?” “God’s word! We know not even that. What’s that trap up there?” he added suddenly. “It’s nailed down. It’s not been used for years.” He thought of the pole in the corner and quailed in his belly, but the utter despair of the two men dulled their astuteness. “It would take a ladder for any one not a tumbler,” said the wounded man listlessly. His companion broke into hysterical laughter. “A tumbler. Oh, a tumbler. Oh—” Wessel stared at them in wonder. “That appeals to my most tragic humor,” cried the man, “that no one—oh, no one—could get up there but a tumbler.” The gallant with the wounded hand snapped his good fingers impatiently. “We must go next door—and then on—” Helplessly they went as two walking under a dark and storm-swept sky. Wessel closed and bolted the door and stood a moment by it, frowning in pity. A low-breathed “Ha!” made him look up. Soft Shoes had already raised the trap and was looking down into the room, his rather elfish face squeezed into a grimace, half of distaste, half of sardonic amusement. “They take off their heads with their helmets,” he remarked in a whisper, “but as for you and me, Wessel, we are two cunning men.” “Now you be cursed,” cried Wessel vehemently. “I knew you for a dog, but when I hear even the half of a tale like this, I know you for such a dirty cur that I am minded to club your skull.” Soft Shoes stared at him, blinking. “At all events,” he replied finally, “I find dignity impossible in this position.” With this he let his body through the trap, hung for an instant, and dropped the seven feet to the floor. “There was a rat considered my ear with the air of a gourmet,” he continued, dusting his hands on his breeches. “I told him in the rat’s peculiar idiom that I was deadly poison, so he took himself off.” “Let’s hear of this night’s lechery!” insisted Wessel angrily. Soft Shoes touched his thumb to his nose and wiggled the fingers derisively at Wessel. “Street gamin!” muttered Wessel. “Have you any paper?” demanded Soft Shoes irrelevantly, and then rudely added, “or can you write?” “Why should I give you paper?” “You wanted to hear of the night’s entertainment. So you shall, an you give me pen, ink, a sheaf of paper, and a room to myself.” Wessel hesitated. “Get out!” he said finally. “As you will. Yet you have missed a most intriguing story.” Wessel wavered—he was soft as taffy, that man—gave in. Soft Shoes went into the adjoining room with the begrudged writing materials and precisely closed the door. Wessel grunted and returned to “The Faerie Queene”; so silence came once more upon the house. III Three o’clock went into four. The room paled, the dark outside was shot through with damp and chill, and Wessel, cupping his brain in his hands, bent low over his table, tracing through the pattern of knights and fairies and the harrowing distresses of many girls. There were dragons chortling along the narrow street outside; when the sleepy armorer’s boy began his work at half-past five the heavy clink and clank of plate and linked mail swelled to the echo of a marching cavalcade. A fog shut down at the first flare of dawn, and the room was grayish yellow at six when Wessel tiptoed to his cupboard bedchamber and pulled open the door. His guest turned on him a face pale as parchment in which two distraught eyes burned like great red letters. He had drawn a chair close to Wessel’s which he was using as a desk; and on it was an amazing stack of closely written pages. With a long sigh Wessel withdrew and returned to his siren, calling himself fool for not claiming his bed here at dawn. prie-dieu The clump of boots outside, the croaking of old beldames from attic to attic, the dull murmur of morning, unnerved him, and, dozing, he slumped in his chair, his brain, overladen with sound and color, working intolerably over the imagery that stacked it. In this restless dream of his he was one of a thousand groaning bodies crushed near the sun, a helpless bridge for the strong-eyed Apollo. The dream tore at him, scraped along his mind like a ragged knife. When a hot hand touched his shoulder, he awoke with what was nearly a scream to find the fog thick in the room and his guest, a gray ghost of misty stuff, beside him with a pile of paper in his hand. “It should be a most intriguing tale, I believe, though it requires some going over. May I ask you to lock it away, and in God’s name let me sleep?” He waited for no answer, but thrust the pile at Wessel, and literally poured himself like stuff from a suddenly inverted bottle upon a couch in the corner; slept, with his breathing regular, but his brow wrinkled in a curious and somewhat uncanny manner. Wessel yawned sleepily and, glancing at the scrawled, uncertain first page, he began reading aloud very softly: The Rape of Lucrece “ From the besieged Ardea all in post, Borne by the trustless wings of false desire, ” Lust-breathing Tarquin leaves the Roman host— About HackerNoon Book Series: We bring you the most important technical, scientific, and insightful public domain books. This book is part of the public domain. F. Scott Fitzgerald (2004). Tales of the Jazz Age. Urbana, Illinois: Project Gutenberg. Retrieved October 2022 https://www.gutenberg.org/files/18857/18857-h/18857-h.htm This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at , located at . www.gutenberg.org https://www.gutenberg.org/policy/license.html

TARQUIN OF CHEAPSIDE

The Cut-Glass Bowl

The troubles of the future

THE EDUCATION OF BETTY

HER FATHER'S DAUGHTER

Rainbow Valley by L. M. Montgomery, is part of the HackerNoon Books Series. You can jump to any chapter in this book here . THE MANSE CHILDREN CHAPTER IV. THE MANSE CHILDREN Aunt Martha might be, and was, a very poor housekeeper; the Rev. John Knox Meredith might be, and was, a very absent-minded, indulgent man. But it could not be denied that there was something very homelike and lovable about the Glen St. Mary manse in spite of its untidiness. Even the critical housewives of the Glen felt it, and were unconsciously mellowed in judgment because of it. Perhaps its charm was in part due to accidental circumstances—the luxuriant vines clustering over its gray, clap-boarded walls, the friendly acacias and balm-of-gileads that crowded about it with the freedom of old acquaintance, and the beautiful views of harbour and sand-dunes from its front windows. But these things had been there in the reign of Mr. Meredith’s predecessor, when the manse had been the primmest, neatest, and dreariest house in the Glen. So much of the credit must be given to the personality of its new inmates. There was an atmosphere of laughter and comradeship about it; the doors were always open; and inner and outer worlds joined hands. Love was the only law in Glen St. Mary manse. The people of his congregation said that Mr. Meredith spoiled his children. Very likely he did. It is certain that he could not bear to scold them. “They have no mother,” he used to say to himself, with a sigh, when some unusually glaring peccadillo forced itself upon his notice. But he did not know the half of their goings-on. He belonged to the sect of dreamers. The windows of his study looked out on the graveyard but, as he paced up and down the room, reflecting deeply on the immortality of the soul, he was quite unaware that Jerry and Carl were playing leap-frog hilariously over the flat stones in that abode of dead Methodists. Mr. Meredith had occasional acute realizations that his children were not so well looked after, physically or morally, as they had been before his wife died, and he had always a dim sub-consciousness that house and meals were very different under Aunt Martha’s management from what they had been under Cecilia’s. For the rest, he lived in a world of books and abstractions; and, therefore, although his clothes were seldom brushed, and although the Glen housewives concluded, from the ivory-like pallor of his clear-cut features and slender hands, that he never got enough to eat, he was not an unhappy man. If ever a graveyard could be called a cheerful place, the old Methodist graveyard at Glen St. Mary might be so called. The new graveyard, at the other side of the Methodist church, was a neat and proper and doleful spot; but the old one had been left so long to Nature’s kindly and gracious ministries that it had become very pleasant. It was surrounded on three sides by a dyke of stones and sod, topped by a gray and uncertain paling. Outside the dyke grew a row of tall fir trees with thick, balsamic boughs. The dyke, which had been built by the first settlers of the Glen, was old enough to be beautiful, with mosses and green things growing out of its crevices, violets purpling at its base in the early spring days, and asters and golden-rod making an autumnal glory in its corners. Little ferns clustered companionably between its stones, and here and there a big bracken grew. On the eastern side there was neither fence nor dyke. The graveyard there straggled off into a young fir plantation, ever pushing nearer to the graves and deepening eastward into a thick wood. The air was always full of the harp-like voices of the sea, and the music of gray old trees, and in the spring mornings the choruses of birds in the elms around the two churches sang of life and not of death. The Meredith children loved the old graveyard. Blue-eyed ivy, “garden-spruce,” and mint ran riot over the sunken graves. Blueberry bushes grew lavishly in the sandy corner next to the fir wood. The varying fashions of tombstones for three generations were to be found there, from the flat, oblong, red sandstone slabs of old settlers, down through the days of weeping willows and clasped hands, to the latest monstrosities of tall “monuments” and draped urns. One of the latter, the biggest and ugliest in the graveyard, was sacred to the memory of a certain Alec Davis who had been born a Methodist but had taken to himself a Presbyterian bride of the Douglas clan. She had made him turn Presbyterian and kept him toeing the Presbyterian mark all his life. But when he died she did not dare to doom him to a lonely grave in the Presbyterian graveyard over-harbour. His people were all buried in the Methodist cemetery; so Alec Davis went back to his own in death and his widow consoled herself by erecting a monument which cost more than any of the Methodists could afford. The Meredith children hated it, without just knowing why, but they loved the old, flat, bench-like stones with the tall grasses growing rankly about them. They made jolly seats for one thing. They were all sitting on one now. Jerry, tired of leap frog, was playing on a jew’s-harp. Carl was lovingly poring over a strange beetle he had found; Una was trying to make a doll’s dress, and Faith, leaning back on her slender brown wrists, was swinging her bare feet in lively time to the jew’s-harp. Jerry had his father’s black hair and large black eyes, but in him the latter were flashing instead of dreamy. Faith, who came next to him, wore her beauty like a rose, careless and glowing. She had golden-brown eyes, golden-brown curls and crimson cheeks. She laughed too much to please her father’s congregation and had shocked old Mrs. Taylor, the disconsolate spouse of several departed husbands, by saucily declaring—in the church-porch at that—“The world isn’t a vale of tears, Mrs. Taylor. It’s a world of laughter.” Little dreamy Una was not given to laughter. Her braids of straight, dead-black hair betrayed no lawless kinks, and her almond-shaped, dark-blue eyes had something wistful and sorrowful in them. Her mouth had a trick of falling open over her tiny white teeth, and a shy, meditative smile occasionally crept over her small face. She was much more sensitive to public opinion than Faith, and had an uneasy consciousness that there was something askew in their way of living. She longed to put it right, but did not know how. Now and then she dusted the furniture—but it was so seldom she could find the duster because it was never in the same place twice. And when the clothes-brush was to be found she tried to brush her father’s best suit on Saturdays, and once sewed on a missing button with coarse white thread. When Mr. Meredith went to church next day every female eye saw that button and the peace of the Ladies’ Aid was upset for weeks. Carl had the clear, bright, dark-blue eyes, fearless and direct, of his dead mother, and her brown hair with its glints of gold. He knew the secrets of bugs and had a sort of freemasonry with bees and beetles. Una never liked to sit near him because she never knew what uncanny creature might be secreted about him. Jerry refused to sleep with him because Carl had once taken a young garter snake to bed with him; so Carl slept in his old cot, which was so short that he could never stretch out, and had strange bed-fellows. Perhaps it was just as well that Aunt Martha was half blind when she made that bed. Altogether they were a jolly, lovable little crew, and Cecilia Meredith’s heart must have ached bitterly when she faced the knowledge that she must leave them. “Where would you like to be buried if you were a Methodist?” asked Faith cheerfully. This opened up an interesting field of speculation. “There isn’t much choice. The place is full,” said Jerry. “I’d like that corner near the road, I guess. I could hear the teams going past and the people talking.” “I’d like that little hollow under the weeping birch,” said Una. “That birch is such a place for birds and they sing like mad in the mornings.” “I’d take the Porter lot where there’s so many children buried. I like lots of company,” said Faith. “Carl, where’d you?” “I’d rather not be buried at all,” said Carl, “but if I had to be I’d like the ant-bed. Ants are awf’ly int’resting.” “How very good all the people who are buried here must have been,” said Una, who had been reading the laudatory old epitaphs. “There doesn’t seem to be a single bad person in the whole graveyard. Methodists must be better than Presbyterians after all.” “Maybe the Methodists bury their bad people just like they do cats,” suggested Carl. “Maybe they don’t bother bringing them to the graveyard at all.” “Nonsense,” said Faith. “The people that are buried here weren’t any better than other folks, Una. But when anyone is dead you mustn’t say anything of him but good or he’ll come back and ha’nt you. Aunt Martha told me that. I asked father if it was true and he just looked through me and muttered, ‘True? True? What is truth? What is truth, O jesting Pilate?’ I concluded from that it must be true.” “I wonder if Mr. Alec Davis would come back and ha’nt me if I threw a stone at the urn on top of his tombstone,” said Jerry. “Mrs. Davis would,” giggled Faith. “She just watches us in church like a cat watching mice. Last Sunday I made a face at her nephew and he made one back at me and you should have seen her glare. I’ll bet she boxed his ears when they got out. Mrs. Marshall Elliott told me we mustn’t offend her on any account or I’d have made a face at her, too!” “They say Jem Blythe stuck out his tongue at her once and she would never have his father again, even when her husband was dying,” said Jerry. “I wonder what the Blythe gang will be like.” “I liked their looks,” said Faith. The manse children had been at the station that afternoon when the Blythe small fry had arrived. “I liked Jem’s looks especially.” “They say in school that Walter’s a sissy,” said Jerry. “I don’t believe it,” said Una, who had thought Walter very handsome. “Well, he writes poetry, anyhow. He won the prize the teacher offered last year for writing a poem, Bertie Shakespeare Drew told me. Bertie’s mother thought he should have got the prize because of his name, but Bertie said he couldn’t write poetry to save his soul, name or no name.” “I suppose we’ll get acquainted with them as soon as they begin going to school,” mused Faith. “I hope the girls are nice. I don’t like most of the girls round here. Even the nice ones are poky. But the Blythe twins look jolly. I thought twins always looked alike, but they don’t. I think the red-haired one is the nicest.” “I liked their mother’s looks,” said Una with a little sigh. Una envied all children their mothers. She had been only six when her mother died, but she had some very precious memories, treasured in her soul like jewels, of twilight cuddlings and morning frolics, of loving eyes, a tender voice, and the sweetest, gayest laugh. “They say she isn’t like other people,” said Jerry. “Mrs. Elliot says that is because she never really grew up,” said Faith. “She’s taller than Mrs. Elliott.” “Yes, yes, but it is inside—Mrs. Elliot says Mrs. Blythe just stayed a little girl inside.” “What do I smell?” interrupted Carl, sniffing. They all smelled it now. A most delectable odour came floating up on the still evening air from the direction of the little woodsy dell below the manse hill. “That makes me hungry,” said Jerry. “We had only bread and molasses for supper and cold ditto for dinner,” said Una plaintively. Aunt Martha’s habit was to boil a large slab of mutton early in the week and serve it up every day, cold and greasy, as long as it lasted. To this Faith, in a moment of inspiration, had give the name of “ditto”, and by this it was invariably known at the manse. “Let’s go and see where that smell is coming from,” said Jerry. They all sprang up, frolicked over the lawn with the abandon of young puppies, climbed a fence, and tore down the mossy slope, guided by the savory lure that ever grew stronger. A few minutes later they arrived breathlessly in the sanctum sanctorum of Rainbow Valley where the Blythe children were just about to give thanks and eat. They halted shyly. Una wished they had not been so precipitate: but Di Blythe was equal to that and any occasion. She stepped forward, with a comrade’s smile. “I guess I know who you are,” she said. “You belong to the manse, don’t you?” Faith nodded, her face creased by dimples. “We smelled your trout cooking and wondered what it was.” “You must sit down and help us eat them,” said Di. “Maybe you haven’t more than you want yourselves,” said Jerry, looking hungrily at the tin platter. “We’ve heaps—three apiece,” said Jem. “Sit down.” No more ceremony was necessary. Down they all sat on mossy stones. Merry was that feast and long. Nan and Di would probably have died of horror had they known what Faith and Una knew perfectly well—that Carl had two young mice in his jacket pocket. But they never knew it, so it never hurt them. Where can folks get better acquainted than over a meal table? When the last trout had vanished, the manse children and the Ingleside children were sworn friends and allies. They had always known each other and always would. The race of Joseph recognized its own. They poured out the history of their little pasts. The manse children heard of Avonlea and Green Gables, of Rainbow Valley traditions, and of the little house by the harbour shore where Jem had been born. The Ingleside children heard of Maywater, where the Merediths had lived before coming to the Glen, of Una’s beloved, one-eyed doll and Faith’s pet rooster. Faith was inclined to resent the fact that people laughed at her for petting a rooster. She liked the Blythes because they accepted it without question. “A handsome rooster like Adam is just as nice a pet as a dog or cat, I think,” she said. “If he was a canary nobody would wonder. And I brought him up from a little, wee, yellow chicken. Mrs. Johnson at Maywater gave him to me. A weasel had killed all his brothers and sisters. I called him after her husband. I never liked dolls or cats. Cats are too sneaky and dolls are dead.” “Who lives in that house away up there?” asked Jerry. “The Miss Wests—Rosemary and Ellen,” answered Nan. “Di and I are going to take music lessons from Miss Rosemary this summer.” Una gazed at the lucky twins with eyes whose longing was too gentle for envy. Oh, if she could only have music lessons! It was one of the dreams of her little hidden life. But nobody ever thought of such a thing. “Miss Rosemary is so sweet and she always dresses so pretty,” said Di. “Her hair is just the colour of new molasses taffy,” she added wistfully—for Di, like her mother before her, was not resigned to her own ruddy tresses. “I like Miss Ellen, too,” said Nan. “She always used to give me candies when she came to church. But Di is afraid of her.” “Her brows are so black and she has such a great deep voice,” said Di. “Oh, how scared of her Kenneth Ford used to be when he was little! Mother says the first Sunday Mrs. Ford brought him to church Miss Ellen happened to be there, sitting right behind them. And the minute Kenneth saw her he just screamed and screamed until Mrs. Ford had to carry him out.” “Who is Mrs. Ford?” asked Una wonderingly. “Oh, the Fords don’t live here. They only come here in the summer. And they’re not coming this summer. They live in that little house ‘way, ‘way down on the harbour shore where father and mother used to live. I wish you could see Persis Ford. She is just like a picture.” “I’ve heard of Mrs. Ford,” broke in Faith. “Bertie Shakespeare Drew told me about her. She was married fourteen years to a dead man and then he came to life.” “Nonsense,” said Nan. “That isn’t the way it goes at all. Bertie Shakespeare can never get anything straight. I know the whole story and I’ll tell it to you some time, but not now, for it’s too long and it’s time for us to go home. Mother doesn’t like us to be out late these damp evenings.” Nobody cared whether the manse children were out in the damp or not. Aunt Martha was already in bed and the minister was still too deeply lost in speculations concerning the immortality of the soul to remember the mortality of the body. But they went home, too, with visions of good times coming in their heads. “I think Rainbow Valley is even nicer than the graveyard,” said Una. “And I just love those dear Blythes. It’s so nice when you can love people because so often you can’t. Father said in his sermon last Sunday that we should love everybody. But how can we? How could we love Mrs. Alec Davis?” “Oh, father only said that in the pulpit,” said Faith airily. “He has more sense than to really think it outside.” The Blythe children went up to Ingleside, except Jem, who slipped away for a few moments on a solitary expedition to a remote corner of Rainbow Valley. Mayflowers grew there and Jem never forgot to take his mother a bouquet as long as they lasted. About HackerNoon Book Series: We bring you the most important technical, scientific, and insightful public domain books. This book is part of the public domain. L. M. Montgomery (2004). Rainbow Valley. Urbana, Illinois: Project Gutenberg. Retrieved https://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/5343/pg5343-images.html This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org , located at https://www.gutenberg.org/policy/license.html.

THE MANSE CHILDREN

Anne of Avonlea by L. M. Montgomery, is part of the HackerNoon Books Series. You can jump to any chapter in this book here . Odds and Ends Chapter XXII - Odds and Ends “So you had tea at the stone house with Lavendar Lewis?” said Marilla at the breakfast table next morning. “What is she like now? It’s over fifteen years since I saw her last . . . it was one Sunday in Grafton church. I suppose she has changed a great deal. Davy Keith, when you want something you can’t reach, ask to have it passed and don’t spread yourself over the table in that fashion. Did you ever see Paul Irving doing that when he was here to meals?” “But Paul’s arms are longer’n mine,” brumbled Davy. “They’ve had eleven years to grow and mine’ve only had seven. ‘Sides, I did ask, but you and Anne was so busy talking you didn’t pay any ‘tention. ‘Sides, Paul’s never been here to any meal escept tea, and it’s easier to be p’lite at tea than at breakfast. You ain’t half as hungry. It’s an awful long while between supper and breakfast. Now, Anne, that spoonful ain’t any bigger than it was last year and I’m ever so much bigger.” “Of course, I don’t know what Miss Lavendar used to look like but I don’t fancy somehow that she has changed a great deal,” said Anne, after she had helped Davy to maple syrup, giving him two spoonfuls to pacify him. “Her hair is snow-white but her face is fresh and almost girlish, and she has the sweetest brown eyes . . . such a pretty shade of wood-brown with little golden glints in them . . . and her voice makes you think of white satin and tinkling water and fairy bells all mixed up together.” “She was reckoned a great beauty when she was a girl,” said Marilla. “I never knew her very well but I liked her as far as I did know her. Some folks thought her peculiar even then. Davy, if ever I catch you at such a trick again you’ll be made to wait for your meals till everyone else is done, like the French.” Most conversations between Anne and Marilla in the presence of the twins, were punctuated by these rebukes Davy-ward. In this instance, Davy, sad to relate, not being able to scoop up the last drops of his syrup with his spoon, had solved the difficulty by lifting his plate in both hands and applying his small pink tongue to it. Anne looked at him with such horrified eyes that the little sinner turned red and said, half shamefacedly, half defiantly, “There ain’t any wasted that way.” “People who are different from other people are always called peculiar,” said Anne. “And Miss Lavendar is certainly different, though it’s hard to say just where the difference comes in. Perhaps it is because she is one of those people who never grow old.” “One might as well grow old when all your generation do,” said Marilla, rather reckless of her pronouns. “If you don’t, you don’t fit in anywhere. Far as I can learn Lavendar Lewis has just dropped out of everything. She’s lived in that out of the way place until everybody has forgotten her. That stone house is one of the oldest on the Island. Old Mr. Lewis built it eighty years ago when he came out from England. Davy, stop joggling Dora’s elbow. Oh, I saw you! You needn’t try to look innocent. What does make you behave so this morning?” “Maybe I got out of the wrong side of the bed,” suggested Davy. “Milty Boulter says if you do that things are bound to go wrong with you all day. His grandmother told him. But which is the right side? And what are you to do when your bed’s against the wall? I want to know.” “I’ve always wondered what went wrong between Stephen Irving and Lavendar Lewis,” continued Marilla, ignoring Davy. “They were certainly engaged twenty-five years ago and then all at once it was broken off. I don’t know what the trouble was but it must have been something terrible, for he went away to the States and never come home since.” “Perhaps it was nothing very dreadful after all. I think the little things in life often make more trouble than the big things,” said Anne, with one of those flashes of insight which experience could not have bettered. “Marilla, please don’t say anything about my being at Miss Lavendar’s to Mrs. Lynde. She’d be sure to ask a hundred questions and somehow I wouldn’t like it . . . nor Miss Lavendar either if she knew, I feel sure.” “I daresay Rachel would be curious,” admitted Marilla, “though she hasn’t as much time as she used to have for looking after other people’s affairs. She’s tied home now on account of Thomas; and she’s feeling pretty downhearted, for I think she’s beginning to lose hope of his ever getting better. Rachel will be left pretty lonely if anything happens to him, with all her children settled out west, except Eliza in town; and she doesn’t like her husband.” Marilla’s pronouns slandered Eliza, who was very fond of her husband. “Rachel says if he’d only brace up and exert his will power he’d get better. But what is the use of asking a jellyfish to sit up straight?” continued Marilla. “Thomas Lynde never had any will power to exert. His mother ruled him till he married and then Rachel carried it on. It’s a wonder he dared to get sick without asking her permission. But there, I shouldn’t talk so. Rachel has been a good wife to him. He’d never have amounted to anything without her, that’s certain. He was born to be ruled; and it’s well he fell into the hands of a clever, capable manager like Rachel. He didn’t mind her way. It saved him the bother of ever making up his own mind about anything. Davy, do stop squirming like an eel.” “I’ve nothing else to do,” protested Davy. “I can’t eat any more, and it’s no fun watching you and Anne eat.” “Well, you and Dora go out and give the hens their wheat,” said Marilla. “And don’t you try to pull any more feathers out of the white rooster’s tail either.” “I wanted some feathers for an Injun headdress,” said Davy sulkily. “Milty Boulter has a dandy one, made out of the feathers his mother give him when she killed their old white gobbler. You might let me have some. That rooster’s got ever so many more’n he wants.” “You may have the old feather duster in the garret,” said Anne, “and I’ll dye them green and red and yellow for you.” “You do spoil that boy dreadfully,” said Marilla, when Davy, with a radiant face, had followed prim Dora out. Marilla’s education had made great strides in the past six years; but she had not yet been able to rid herself of the idea that it was very bad for a child to have too many of its wishes indulged. “All the boys of his class have Indian headdresses, and Davy wants one too,” said Anne. “I know how it feels . . . I’ll never forget how I used to long for puffed sleeves when all the other girls had them. And Davy isn’t being spoiled. He is improving every day. Think what a difference there is in him since he came here a year ago.” “He certainly doesn’t get into as much mischief since he began to go to school,” acknowledged Marilla. “I suppose he works off the tendency with the other boys. But it’s a wonder to me we haven’t heard from Richard Keith before this. Never a word since last May.” “I’ll be afraid to hear from him,” sighed Anne, beginning to clear away the dishes. “If a letter should come I’d dread opening it, for fear it would tell us to send the twins to him.” A month later a letter did come. But it was not from Richard Keith. A friend of his wrote to say that Richard Keith had died of consumption a fortnight previously. The writer of the letter was the executor of his will and by that will the sum of two thousand dollars was left to Miss Marilla Cuthbert in trust for David and Dora Keith until they came of age or married. In the meantime the interest was to be used for their maintenance. “It seems dreadful to be glad of anything in connection with a death,” said Anne soberly. “I’m sorry for poor Mr. Keith; but I am glad that we can keep the twins.” “It’s a very good thing about the money,” said Marilla practically. “I wanted to keep them but I really didn’t see how I could afford to do it, especially when they grew older. The rent of the farm doesn’t do any more than keep the house and I was bound that not a cent of your money should be spent on them. You do far too much for them as it is. Dora didn’t need that new hat you bought her any more than a cat needs two tails. But now the way is made clear and they are provided for.” Davy and Dora were delighted when they heard that they were to live at Green Gables, “for good.” The death of an uncle whom they had never seen could not weigh a moment in the balance against that. But Dora had one misgiving. “Was Uncle Richard buried?” she whispered to Anne. “Yes, dear, of course.” “He . . . he . . . isn’t like Mirabel Cotton’s uncle, is he?” in a still more agitated whisper. “He won’t walk about houses after being buried, will he, Anne?” About HackerNoon Book Series: We bring you the most important technical, scientific, and insightful public domain books. This book is part of the public domain. L. M. Montgomery (2022). Anne of Avonlea. Urbana, Illinois: Project Gutenberg. Retrieved https://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/47/pg47-images.html This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org , located at https://www.gutenberg.org/policy/license.html. The lead image was generated using HackerNoon's Stable Disffusion Al Image Generator feature, via the prompt "Anne of Avonlea".

Odds and Ends

Our Humble Helpers: Familiar Talks on the Domestic Animals by Jean-Henri Fabre, is part of the HackerNoon Books Series. You can jump to any chapter in this book here . THE PIGEON CHAPTER XV. THE PIGEON “The strong resemblance that the tame pigeon often bears to the wild one known as the rock-pigeon makes us suspect this latter to be the ancestor of the bird that inhabits our dove-cotes. The rock-pigeon has ashy-blue plumage with black-spotted wings and pure-white tail. The neck and breast are changeable in color according to the light in which they are seen, and shine with a metallic luster, in which sometimes purple and sometimes golden green dominates.” “That is exactly the ordinary plumage of our pigeons,” said Emile. “When they come and peck the bread that I crumble for them in the sun, I like to see their magnificent breasts shining first with one color and then with another, every time the bird moves.” “Fond of traveling and endowed with a power of flight in accord with this predilection, the rock-pigeon is scattered over the greater part of the world. Nevertheless it is rare in France, where a few wretched pairs, always in dread of the talons of the bird of prey or the hunter’s shot, make their nests in the most sparsely settled cantons, on the shelves of high rocks. The rocky and mountainous regions [ ]of the Mediterranean islands are their chosen haunts in Europe.” 139 “But it is no uncommon thing,” Louis remarked, “to hear of wild pigeons being shot in this country.” “You confound the rock-pigeon, my friend, with another kind of wild pigeon, the wood-pigeon. This, as its name indicates, perches on the branches of tall trees, which the rock-pigeon never does.” “Yes, that’s so,” Jules interjected. “I have never seen pigeons that are descended from the rock-pigeon alighting on trees. They alight on rocks, on roofs, or on the ground.” “In its free state the rock-pigeon builds its nest in the hollows of rocks; the wood-pigeon, on the contrary, builds in trees, in the depths of dense forests, where it finds in abundance the acorn and beech-nut, its principal food. These habits are not the only difference between the two birds. The wood-pigeon is much larger; its breast has the color of lees of wine; its neck, gleaming with variegated metallic glints like that of its brother, is further adorned on each side with a white spot in the shape of a cross. Its flight is sustained and rapid, its cooing sonorous, its sight piercing. It feeds on all sorts of seeds, especially acorns, which it swallows whole. “Wood-pigeons like to perch on dead branches at the tops of trees. During the cold winter mornings they stay there motionless, waiting for a little warmth to come with the rising sun and arouse them from their torpor. In summer they frequent full-grown forest-trees, and their cooing may be heard in [ ]the very midst of the dense foliage. Their nesting place is by preference at the junction of several forking branches. The male goes forth and gathers from neighboring trees, never from the ground, the building material of dry twigs. If he sees a dead twig attached to the branch on which he is perching, he seizes it with his claws, sometimes with the beak, and tries to break it either by leaning on it with all his weight or by pulling it toward him. Possessed of his prize, he returns at once to his mate, who contents herself with putting the materials into place without taking part in getting them. In building the nest, therefore, the male is the worker and the female the architect; but an architect without talent, we must admit, for the structure is nothing but a mass of intertwined sticks without lining of feathers and flock, and, worse still, without firmness. Hence it is not unusual for this nest to fall to pieces before the brood has taken its flight; fortunately the strong branches on which it rests save the young ones from a disastrous fall. 140 “Wild and mistrustful, the wood-pigeon has never been willing to accept the calculated hospitality of the pigeon-house; it prefers the perilous life of the woods to the full-fed existence of servitude. This is the wild pigeon that frequently falls before the hunter’s fire. In certain defiles of the Pyrenees it is caught with large nets, hundreds at a time. The rock-pigeon, on the contrary, has from time immemorial been dependent on man; and in return for the shelter of the pigeon-house which protects it from [ ]birds of prey it has been willing to forget so completely the rocks where it first nested that to-day one seldom finds, at least in our country, any wild pairs. 141 “Not all our pigeons, however, show the same degree of tameness; far from it. Some, voluntary captives rather than real prisoners, are faithful to the pigeon-house only as long as they find suitable food in the neighboring fields, whither they go in flocks. If the house is not to their liking, or if food is lacking, they seek another abode, the more adventurous sometimes even returning to the wild life. The others, thoroughly enslaved, have completely lost their desire for independence. Seldom do they leave their roof, and some are such stay-at-homes that the most pressing hunger could not make them go out and try to find a little food for themselves in the neighboring furrows. Food must always be given them, for they are incapable of procuring it themselves. Domestic Pigeon “Those first mentioned, the pigeons that venture afield and find food for themselves, are called rock-pigeons, after the wild pigeon whose ways, and frequently whose plumage, they have retained in part. They are also known as flighty pigeons (fuyards), either on account of their occasional distant expeditions, or because they sometimes take flight from the pigeon-house and never return. They are the least costly to raise, but they are small and not very productive, as they lay only two or three times a year. The second kind, those that scarcely ever leave the pigeon-cote and cannot do without our care, are [ ]called cote-pigeons. Their maintenance costs more because they must be fed all the year round; but in compensation they do not ravage the neighboring harvests, which cannot be said of the rock-pigeons; and beside they are much more productive, their periods of laying numbering as many as ten a year. Modified from the earliest times by man’s intervention, the cote-pigeon includes a number of varieties in which the traits of the primitive species are often no longer recognizable. Let us mention some of these. 142 Pouter Pigeon “First of all are the pigeons with feathered legs and feet, looking as if they wore gaiters. This growth of feathers reaches to the very tips of the [ ]claws, forming a cumbersome and unsightly sort of footgear which is found to be due to captivity, the wild bird never having anything of the kind. Then come the pouter pigeons, which have the faculty of swallowing air and inflating the crop in a large ball, so that the base of the neck seems to be affected with the deformity known as goiter. That is their way of showing off: the larger the ball, the prouder they are of their figure.” 143 “What a queer idea,” Emile exclaimed, “to think it improves one’s looks to have a frightful goiter or to wear those feathered leggings that trail in the mud and interfere with walking!” “A life of idleness, my friend, engenders many caprices: examples abound in man even more than in pigeons. But let us get on; these things do not concern us. “Now, here are some pigeons that have their heads adorned with a crown of feathers, are shod like the preceding, and imitate in their cooing the roll of a drum.” “Then they ought to be called, from the roll of the drum, drummer-pigeons,” declared Emile. “You have hit it exactly: that is precisely their name. Here are others with trailing wings, tail erect and expanded like a fan, and the body in an almost continual state of trembling. You would say they had a fever. The spread tail gives them the name of fan-tails, while from their ceaseless shaking they are sometimes called shakers. Ruffled pigeons [ ]have the neck encircled with a ruff of disordered feathers. Jacobins wear a sort of hood resembling a monk’s cowl. The turbit carries on the nape of its neck a tuft of feathers thrown back and hollowed out like a shell. Tumblers are remarkable for their strange evolutions in the air: in mid-flight they will suddenly let themselves fall and turn a somersault as if shot in the wing. This recreation is their favorite pastime.” 144 Jacobins “The pleasure of a vertical fall,” remarked Jules, “accompanied by a somersault, must carry some fear with it. Perhaps that is what gives zest to this exercise.” “But the pigeon pulls up in time?” queried Emile. “Whenever it wishes to,” his uncle replied, “it brings to an end its downward hurtling from these airy heights, ordinary flying is resumed, and presently the tumbles begin again finer than ever. Here let us pause, without exhausting the list of varieties, amounting to twenty-four, counting only the principal ones. These few examples show you sufficiently what diversity pigeon-house life has stamped on the form, habits, and plumage of the primitive bird. “All pigeons, wild as well as tame, lay never more than two eggs to a hatching, from which generally spring brother and sister. The cares of brooding [ ]are shared by the father and mother alike, a practice found in no other tame bird. In the morning, when hunger makes itself felt, the female calls the male by a peculiar cooing and invites him to come and take her place on the eggs, which he does with alacrity. About three or four o’clock in the afternoon the rôles change. If the pigeon which until then has remained on the nest does not see its mate coming, there follows an anxious search, with admonitory cooings and, in case of need, admonitory peckings; and the laggard is brought back to the serious business of brooding. But as a rule the mother is irreproachably punctual; she returns to the nest at the hour agreed upon and does not leave it again until the next morning. Incubation takes seventeen or eighteen days. 145 “The little ones are born naked, blind, ungraceful. The father and mother, sometimes one, sometimes the other, feed them from the beak. This beak-feeding method of the pigeons is exceptional and deserves special consideration. I need not tell you how other birds feed their brood; any one that has ever raised a sparrow will know that.” “The little sparrow,” Jules hastened to explain, “opens its beak as wide as it can and the parents put into it the food they have brought, just as I put a grasshopper into it, or a piece of a cherry, or a soaked bread-crumb.” “Jules forgets,” said Emile, “that it is well to tap the little bird on the tail to excite its appetite and make it open its beak.”[ ] 146 “Emile’s improvement is not indispensable,” Uncle Paul replied. “If it is hungry the bird will open its beak without being asked. Into this beak that gapes so wide the parents put the point of theirs and drop whatever prize they have found; but if the little bird is very young the father and mother begin by half-digesting in their own stomach the food destined for the little one. Then they put their beak into the little one’s and disgorge the nutritious pap that they have prepared. “Well, pigeons do exactly the reverse: it is the father and mother that gape, and the little ones that plunge their beak deep down into the throat of the parent bird. The latter is then seized with a convulsion of the stomach accompanied by a rapid trembling of the wings and body. Little plaintive cries denote that the operation is perhaps not quite painless. From the crop thus done violence to, the half-digested nutritive matter comes up in a jet that passes into the half-open beak of the nursling. Twice a day the little pigeons receive their food in this way; twice a day, but no more, so painful to the nurses seems this mode of feeding from beak to beak.” “I should think,” said Jules, “that the parents would feel rather uncomfortable when the young pigeon tickles their throat, deep down, with its beak. If we can judge by what would happen to us, the stomach would rebel and would throw up its contents painfully.” “That is apparently the way of it. The disgorged [ ]food is a pap of seeds all ground up fine in the crop; but for the first three or four days after hatching a special food is given, fine and strengthening, suited to the weakness of the little one. It is a white substance, almost liquid, having the appearance of real milk. It does not come entirely from digested food; for the most part it consists of a sort of milkfood that is distilled by the stomach on this occasion only. So for the first days of the brood’s rearing the pigeons have, deep down in the throat, a sort of milk factory, or what one might call the equivalent of an udder.” 147 “That reminds me,” Jules interposed, “of a joke common enough among us fellows. When we want to gull some poor innocent, we tell him that pigeons suck. This jest comes nearer the truth than is commonly thought. Pigeons do not suck the breast, it is true, but it might well enough be said that they are suckled, since what they are fed on has so much resemblance to milk.” “Little pigeons stay in the nest a long time,” resumed Uncle Paul. “Entirely covered with feathers and almost as large as their parents, they still continue to receive parental care. To induce them to shift for themselves and give up their place when the time for a new laying approaches, some cuffs have to be given to these spoiled children that are so reluctant to leave home. But at last they consent, though not without returning from time to time to torment the mother with their lamentations and to beg her for something to eat. The father, less weak [ ]on the side of his affections, thenceforth receives these importunate lazy-bodies with a peck of the beak. 148 “Let us consider certain other details of the pigeon’s habits. I will not tell you, these things being pretty well known to you, of the cooings of the pigeon when it puffs out its throat, of its ceremonious salutations, its bowing to the very ground, its pirouettes when it shows off before its mate. I shall interest you more by acquainting you with its gregarious instinct, which impels it to assemble in immense flocks when it travels, in its wild state, to find food.” About HackerNoon Book Series: We bring you the most important technical, scientific, and insightful public domain books. This book is part of the public domain. Jean-Henri Fabre (2022). Our Humble Helpers: Familiar Talks on the Domestic Animals. Urbana, Illinois: Project Gutenberg. Retrieved https://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/67073/pg67073-images.html This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org , located at https://www.gutenberg.org/policy/license.html .

THE PIGEON

THE DUCK

Our Humble Helpers: Familiar Talks on the Domestic Animals by Jean-Henri Fabre, is part of the HackerNoon Books Series. You can jump to any chapter in this book here . THE POULARD CHAPTER VIII. THE POULARD “In a month the young chickens are strong enough to do without the tender care of their early days. The pap, the dainty dish of hard-boiled eggs mixed with lettuce and bread crumbs, is no longer served to them, but their rations consist simply of grain and green stuff. This kind of weaning is not effected without some regret on their part at the remembrance of the pap; but the mother makes amends for it by teaching them to scratch the earth and seek insects and worms, a royal feast for them. She shows them how a fly should be snapped up when warming itself in the sun against the wall; how the worm is to be caught and drawn from the ground before it goes into its hole. She shows them in what manner to proceed in order to derive the largest profit from a tuft of grass where the ants have stored their eggs; with what nice attention they must search the under side of large leaves where various insects are in hiding. How to carry out little predatory excursions in the neighboring cultivated fields when opportunity offers, how to scratch up the newly made garden-plots and rummage in every nook and corner, pillaging here and pilfering there—this, too, is all comprised in the educational curriculum prepared by the careful mother. After a couple of weeks of such practice the pupils are past masters; they lose the name of chickens and take that of pullets and roosters. Then the family disbands, the hen returning to her laying of eggs, and the chickens, thenceforth expert in the difficult science of earning their living, being left to themselves. “Very diverse fates await them. Some, fortune’s favorites, will grow peacefully to increase the poultry-yard; others, more numerous, as soon as they are large enough will be given over to the kitchen knife; some, chosen from those easiest to fatten, will undergo a diet that will make them peculiarly suitable for the table. Let me tell you to-day through what grievous trials the poor bird passes to become, by artificial aid, the plump, fat, succulent fowl that we call a poulard.” “Then a poulard is not a separate species of hen?” asked Jules. “No, my friend. The poulard is only an ordinary hen artificially subjected to a kind of life that fattens it. All species do not lend themselves with equal success to this artificial fattening; the best known in this respect is that of la Flèche, which furnishes the celebrated poulard of Mans. “I have already told you a few words about this species, which is distinguished from the others by its dashing appearance and long legs. The plumage is entirely black, touched with glints of violet and [ ]green. The cock carries proudly, for comb, two horns of brilliant red flesh; its wattles are pendent and very long. The hen has two similar but shorter horns; her wattles are small and rounded; finally, her legs have not the disproportionate length of the cock’s tall stilts. Such are the patients preëminently destined for the cruel industry of fattening. Let us come now to the practice of it. 64 “The greatest care in this world is that of the family. You know with what continual and laborious solicitude the hen watches over her little ones, with what self-sacrifice the mother spends herself in order to keep her nest of eggs warm. If pains were not taken to remove her from the nest and make her eat, she would let herself starve to death, sacrificing her own life for the sake of her eggs. Is it possible for a bird to take on flesh with such ardent maternal love burning in her veins? Certainly not. The first condition for becoming large and fat is to consider one’s self alone, a thing permitted only to the beast whose end is to become an excellent roast. “Well, in order that the hen may consider solely herself, think of nothing but eating and digesting well, so as to take on fat and flesh abundantly, it is put out of her power to lay, which in turn takes from her all idea of brooding and of raising young chickens. Out of a mother, ready to devote herself unstintingly, is made a brute that, if only its crop be full, has no care of any kind; in fact, a veritable fat-factory. The operation is a cruel one. With the blade of a penknife a slight incision is made in the [ ]stomach, and the organ in which the eggs are formed is removed. With a little care the slight wound soon heals, and the mutilated bird is ready for the life of a poulard. Let loose in the poultry-yard, it has henceforth nothing to do but eat, digest, and sleep; sleep, digest, and eat. Leading such a life, the bird soon begins to grow fat. Things go all the better and quicker, however, if the bird cannot move freely, cannot come and go at will; for it is to be remarked that no more than love of offspring does love of liberty fatten those that feel its generous ardor. You will ponder that later, my children, when you are older. So they confine the poulards in coops.” 65 “What sort of coops?” asked Emile. “They are low cages divided into cells, with one poulard to a cell. Crouching in its narrow compartment, the fowl cannot move or even turn round. Solid partitions bar the view except in front near the feed-trough, and prevent its seeing its neighbors, its companions in confinement, so that nothing may distract it from its ceaseless work of digestion. The cage is placed in a room heated to a mild temperature, far from all noise and in a semi-obscurity which induces sleep, so favorable to the functions of the stomach. At punctually regulated hours, far enough apart for appetite to be aroused, but near enough together to prevent its becoming actual hunger, which would impair the well-being of the stomach and hinder the fattening of the bird, three meals a day are served in the feed-trough. Raw beets, cooked potatoes, crushed grain, curdled milk, barley, [ ]wheat, maize, buckwheat, compose the menu in turn, so as to excite by variety and choice of food an appetite that satiety daily makes more languishing. Thus fed to repletion, the poor creature, with nothing to distract it from the filling of its crop, eats to pass the time, falls asleep from sheer stupor, awakes, and begins to eat again, only to fall asleep once more. Toward the end of this treatment the poulard, gorged beyond measure, refuses to eat any more. To arouse the last feeble promptings of appetite recourse is had to more delicate food, calculated to keep alive a few days longer the desire for nourishment. For solid food a dough of fine flour is served, and for liquid refreshment, milk, pure milk, if you please. If the bird, already stuffed to bursting, positively refuses to eat any more, it is made to eat by force.” 66 “By force?” said Emile, “when it is bursting and can eat no more?” “Yes, my friend, by force. Willy, nilly, it must still swallow for some days longer, after which comes the end of its miseries. It is killed and appears on the table as a tender and juicy roast abounding in fat. “This forced feeding is the essential feature in the method followed to obtain the renowned poulards of Mans. “According to the masters of this art, the process is as follows: Without preliminary subjection to the mutilation I spoke of, the fowls are placed in narrow cages in a warm, dark room, the doors and windows [ ]of which have been made tight to prevent the free circulation of air. For food, a mixture of barley-flour, oats, and buckwheat is moistened with milk, and the dough is divided into little pieces or oblong balls shaped like an olive and of about the length of the little finger. At meal times, which must be very regular, the feeder takes three hens at a time, ties them together by the legs, puts them on his knees, and, by the light of a lamp, begins by making them swallow a spoonful of water or whey; then, taking them by turns, he introduces a bolus into the beak of each of the hens, and to facilitate the descent of the large pieces he presses lightly with his fingers, passing from the base of the beak down to the crop. While the bird that has been fed is recovering from its painful deglutition, the two others are treated in the same manner. To this first ball are added a second, a third, and so on up to a dozen or fifteen, all put into the beak and swallowed willingly or otherwise. Their crops sufficiently full, the three hens are replaced in their cages, where they have nothing to do but sleep and peacefully digest their copious meal. The others go through the same treatment, three by three, in a fixed order.” 67 “And if the crop is stuffed too full with these twelve or fifteen lumps of dough,” asked Jules, “may not the bird die, choked with food?” “There is no great danger; all will go well. Remember the bird’s astonishing powers of digestion and the experiments I related to you on this subject.”[ ] 68 “It is true that a gizzard capable of getting rid of leaden balls stuck with needles or lancets ought easily to dispose of a few lumps of dough.” “Besides, heed is taken not to go beyond the fowl’s digestive powers. A halt is called as soon as the crop appears to be full. It takes from six weeks to two months of this treatment to bring the poulard to perfection.” “I am too fond of the poulard served up as a choice roast to speak ill of what I have just heard; nevertheless I will admit, Uncle, that this barbarous fattening process is repulsive to me. I pity those poor things crouching there in the dark, in cells where they cannot move, and forcibly crammed with food until almost stuffed to death.” “This sympathy proceeds from a good disposition, and I approve of it; but, after all, what is to be done? Since we need the poulard, we must needs countenance the process by which the hen is turned into the poulard. Our life is sustained by animal life. Therefore all that our pity can do is to lessen as much as possible the unavoidable suffering and, above all, see to it that the victims of our needs do not become also the victims of a useless and stupid brutality.” About HackerNoon Book Series: We bring you the most important technical, scientific, and insightful public domain books. This book is part of the public domain. Jean-Henri Fabre (2022). Our Humble Helpers: Familiar Talks on the Domestic Animals. Urbana, Illinois: Project Gutenberg. Retrieved https://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/67073/pg67073-images.html This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org , located at https://www.gutenberg.org/policy/license.html .

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