Elbow-Room: A Novel Without a Plot Read online

  CHAPTER XVIII.

  _THE MATUTINAL ROOSTER_.

  Horatio remarks to Hamlet, "The morning cock crew loud;" and I have nodoubt he did; he always does, especially if he is confined during theperformance of his vocal exercises to a narrow city yard surrounded bybrick walls which act as sounding-boards to carry the vibrations tothe ears of a sleeper who is already restless with the summer heatand with the buzzing of early and pertinacious flies. To such a man,aroused and indignant, there comes a profound conviction that theurban rooster is far more vociferous than his rural brethren; that hecan sing louder, hold on longer and begin again more quickly than thebucolic cock who has communed only with nature and known no enviouslongings to outshriek the morning milkman or the purveyor of catfish.And he who is thus afflicted perhaps may be justified if he regards"the cock, that trumpet of the morn," as an insufferable nuisance,whose only excuse for existence is that he is pleasant to the eye andthe palate when, bursting with stuffing, he lies, brown and crisp,among the gravy, ready for the carving-knife.

  But the man who is fortunate enough to dwell in the country duringthe ardent summer days takes a different and more kindly view ofchanticleer. If he is waked early in the morning by the clarion voiceof some neighboring cock, he will not repine, provided he went to bedat a reasonably early hour, for he will hear some music that is notwholly to be despised. The rooster in the neighboring barn-yard givesout the theme. His voice is a deep, but broken, bass. It is suggestiveof his having roosted during the night in a draft, which has inflamedhis vocal chords so that his tones have lost their sweetness. It isas if a coffee-mill had essayed to crow. The theme is taken up by athin-voiced rooster a quarter of a mile away, and scarcely has hereached the concluding note before a baritone cock, a little moreremote, repeats the cadence, only to have his song broken in upon bya nearer bird who understands exactly the part he is to play in thefugue. And so it passes on from the one to the other, growing fainterand fainter in the distance as Shanghai sings to Bantam and Chittagongto Brahmapootra, until, at last, there is silence; and then, "O hark!O hear! How thin and clear!" far, far away some rooster sends out adelicate falsetto note that might have come from a microscopic cockwho is practicing ventriloquism in the cellar. Instantly the catarrhalchicken in the next yard begins the refrain again with his hoarsevoice; and then again and again the fugue goes round, never tiring thelistener, but always growing more musical, until the sun is fairly up,the hens awake and the scratching of the day is ready to begin.

  The note of the cock has been misrepresented. Shakespeare, followingusage, perhaps, has given it as "cock-a-doodle-doo," and that is theaccepted interpretation of it. But this does not convey the properimpression. We should say that if human syllables can tell the storythey would assume some such form as:

  _Ooauk-auk-auk-au-au-au-auk_!

  It is a song that ought to be studied and glorified in print. Thinkwhat a history it has! That identical combination of sounds whichwakes and maddens the sleeping citizen of to-day was heard by Noah andhis family with precisely the same cadence and accent in the ark. Itwas that very crow that Peter heard when he had denied his Master. Itis a crow that has come down to us from Eden almost without a moment'sintermission. It is a crow which has passed round the world centuryafter century, and now passes, as the herald of the coming of the sun.It may yet be made the theme of a majestic musical composition, nowthat Wagner has come to teach men how to build a lyric drama upona phrase. Perhaps the coming American national song may have thisfamiliar crow for its inspiration and its burden. We might do worse,perhaps, than to take the rooster for our national bird, even if wereject his song as the basis of our national anthem. We took our eaglefrom Rome, as France did hers; would it not have been wiser if we hadtaken the cock instead, as France did after the Revolution? The Romansand Greeks regarded the cock as a sacred bird. The principal thingthat the average school-boy remembers about Socrates is that he killedhimself immediately after ordering that a cock should be sacrificed toAesculapius; and some have held that the reason of his suicide was thevociferousness of the cock, which he wanted to kill in revenge for themisery it had caused him while he was trying to sleep or to think.

  THE EARLY COCK]

  The cock is a braver bird than the eagle. He has ever been a bold andready warrior, and has worn a warrior's spurs from the beginning. Hehas one high soldierly quality: he knows when he is whipped; for whohas not seen him, when defeated in a gallant contest, sneak away to adistant-corner to stand, with ruffled feathers, upon a single leg, thevery picture of humiliation and despair? And he is vigilant, forhas he not for ages revolved upon church-steeples as the emblem ofwatchfulness? He has the homelier virtues. He is a kind father and afond as well as a multitudinous husband. He knows how to protect hisfamily from errant and disreputable roosters, and he is always willingto stand aside with unsatisfied appetite and permit them to devour adainty he has found. He is useful and admirable in his relation tothis world, and he is not without value to the next, for popularbelief has credited him with the office of warning revisiting spiritsto retire from the earth; and when he crows all through the night, theKatie Kings and other ghostly persons who come from space to rapupon tables and evoke discordant twangs from guitars are deaf to theseductive entreaties of the mediums. When

  "This bird of dawning singeth all night long, ... then they say no spirit dares stir abroad."

  Perhaps the true method of expelling Satan from the land and ofreforming the corruption which afflicts the country is to placethe cock upon our standards and to offer him inducements to crowperpetually. There should be something to that effect in the politicalplatforms. A goose saved Rome; why should not a rooster rescueAmerica? Let the patriot who curses the noisy bird which crows himfrom his drowsy couch at an unseemly hour think of these things andallay his wrath with reflections upon the well-deserved glories of thematutinal rooster.

  I have one neighbor who does not regard the crowing cock with properenthusiasm--who is indeed inclined to look upon it with disgust; butas he has been a victim of the bird's vociferousness, perhaps hissentiments of dislike for the proud bird may be excused.

  The agricultural society of our county held a poultry show last fall,and Mr. Butterwick, who is a member of the society, was invited todeliver the address at the commencement of the fair. Mr. Butterwickprepared what he considered a very learned paper upon the culture ofdomestic fowls; and when the time arrived, he was on the platformready to enlighten the audience. The birds were arranged around thehall in cages; and when the exhibition had been formally opened by thechairman, the orator came forward with his manuscript in his hand.Just as he began to read it a black Poland rooster close to the stageuttered a loud and defiant crow. There were about two hundred roostersin the hall, and every one of them instantly began to crow in the mostvehement manner, and the noise excited the hens so much that they allcackled as loudly they could.

  Of course the speaker's voice could not be heard, and he came to adead halt, while the audience laughed. After waiting for ten minutessilence was again obtained, and Butterwick began a second time.

  As soon as he had uttered the words "Ladies and gentlemen," the Polandrooster, which seemed to have a grudge against the speaker, emittedanother preposterous crow, and all the other fowls in the room joinedin the deafening chorus. The audience roared, and Butterwick grew redin the face with passion. But when the noise subsided, he went at itagain, and got as far as "Ladies and gentlemen, the domestic barn-yardfowl affords a subject of the highest interest to the--" when thePoland rooster became engaged in a contest with an overgrown Shanghaichicken, and this set the hens of the combatants to cackling, and in amoment the entire collection was in another uproar. This was toomuch. Mr. Butterwick was beside himself with rage. He flung down hismanuscript, rushed to the cage, and shaking his fist at the Polandchicken exclaimed,

  "You diabolical fiend, I've half a mind to murder you!"

  Then he kicked the cage to pieces with his foot, and seizing therooster
twisted its neck and flung it on the floor. Then he fled fromthe hall, followed by peals of laughter from the audience and moreterrific clatter from the fowls. The exhibition was opened withoutfurther ceremony, and the dissertation on the domestic barn-yard fowlwas ordered to be printed in the annual report of the proceedings ofthe society.

  One day while I was talking with Mr. Keyser upon the subject of thecock he pointed to a chicken that was roosting upon an adjoiningfence, and told me a story about the fowl that I must refuse tobelieve.

  "Perhaps you never noticed that rooster," said Keyser--"very likelyyou wouldn't have observed him; but I don't care in what light youlook at him, the more you study him, the more talented he appears.You talk about your American iggles and birds of freedom, but thatinsignificant-looking chicken yonder can give any of them twentypoints and pocket them at the first shot. That rooster has traits ofcharacter that'd adorn almost any walk of life.

  THE AFFAIR AT THE POULTRY-SHOW]

  "Most chickens are kinder stupid; but what I like about him is that heis sympathetic, he has feeling. I know last fall that my Shanghai henwas taken sick while she was trying to hatch out some eggs, and thatrooster was so compassionate that he used to go in and set on thatnest for hours, trying to help her out, so that she could go offrecreating after exercise. And when she died, he turned right in andtook charge of things--seemed to feel that he ought to be a father tothose unborn little orphans; and he straddled around over those eggsfor ever so long. He never got much satisfaction out of it, though.Most of them were duck eggs, and it seemed to kinder cut him up whenhe looked at those birds after they hatched out. He took it to heart,and appeared to feel low-spirited and afflicted. He would go off andstand by himself--stand on one leg in a corner of the fence and lethis mind brood over his troubles until you'd pity him. It disgustedhim to think how the job turned out.

  "Now, you wouldn't think such a chicken as that would have muchcourage, but he'd just as leave fight a wagon-load of tigers as not.He got a notion in his head that that rooster over there on theBaptist church-steeple was alive, and he couldn't bear to think thatit was up there sailing around and putting on airs over him, and agood many times I've seen him try to fly up at it, so's to arrange afight. When he found he couldn't make it, he'd crow at the Baptistrooster and dare it to come down, and at last, when all his effortswere useless, would you believe that rooster one day attacked thesexton as the weathercock's next friend, and drove his spurs so farinto the sexton's shanks that he walked on crutches for more'n a week?I never saw a mere chicken have such fine instincts and such pluck.

  "He is a splendid fighter, anyway, just as he stands. Why, he had alittle fuss with Murphy's Poland rooster here some time back, andinstead of going at him and taking the chances of getting whipped,that chicken actually put himself into training, ate nothing but corn,took regular exercise, went to roost early, took a cold bath everymorning and got a pullet to rub him down with a corn-cob. It waswonderful; and in a week or so he was all bone and muscle, and heflickered over the fence after Murphy's rooster and sent him whizzinginto the next world on the fourth round.

  "I never knew such a rooster. Now, do you know I believe that chickenactually takes an interest in politics? Oh, you may laugh, but lastfall during the campaign he was so excited about something that hecouldn't eat, and the night they had the Republican mass-meeting herehe roosted on the chandelier in the hall, and every time GeneralTrumps made a good point that chicken would cackle and flap his wings,as much as to say, 'Them's my sentiments!' And on the day of theparade he turned out and followed the last wagon, keeping step withthe music and never dropping out of line but once, when he stopped tofight a Democratic rooster belonging to old Byerly, who was on theDemocratic ticket. And in the morning, after the Republicans won, hejust got on the fence out here and crowed so vociferously you could'veheard him across the river, particularly when I ran up the Americanflag and read the latest returns.

  "Yes, sir. Now, I know you'll think it's ridiculous when I tell you,but it's an actual fact, that that very day my daughter was playingthe 'Star-spangled Banner' on the piano, and that rooster, when heheard it, came scudding into the parlor, and after flipping up on thepiano he struck out and crowed that tune just as natural as if he wasan educated musician. Positive truth; and he beat time with his tail.He don't crow like any other rooster. Every morning he works offselections from Beethoven and Mozart and those people, and on Sundayshe frequently lets himself out on hymn-tunes. I've known him to set onthat fence for more'n an hour at a time practicing the scales, and henearly kicked another rooster to death one day because that roostercrowed flat. I saw him do it myself. And now I really must be going.Good-morning."

  I think I shall send out and kill that rooster at the firstopportunity. I want Keyser to have one thing less to fib about. He hastoo much variety at present.