or the crowing of the noble

cock beneventano

in all parts of the world many high-spirited revolts from rascally despotisms had of late been knocked on the head; many dreadful casualties, by locomotive and steamer, had likewise knocked hundreds of high-spirited travelers on the head (i lost a dear friend in one of them); my own private affairs were also full of despotisms, casualties, and knockings on the head, when early one morning in spring, being too full of hypoes to sleep, i sallied out to walk on my hillside pasture.

it was a cool and misty, damp, disagreeable air. the country looked underdone, its raw juices squirting out all round. i buttoned out this squitchy air as well as i could with my lean, double-breasted dress-coat—my overcoat being so long-skirted i only used it in my wagon—and spitefully thrusting my crab-stick into the oozy sod, bent my blue form to the steep ascent of the hill. this toiling posture[212] brought my head pretty well earthward, as if i were in the act of butting it against the world. i marked the fact, but only grinned at it with a ghastly grin.

all round me were tokens of a divided empire. the old grass and the new grass were striving together. in the low wet swales the verdure peeped out in vivid green; beyond, on the mountains, lay light patches of snow, strangely relieved against their russet sides; all the humped hills looked like brindled kine in the shivers. the woods were strewn with dry dead boughs, snapped off by the riotous winds of march, while the young trees skirting the woods were just beginning to show the first yellowish tinge of the nascent spray.

i sat down for a moment on a great rotting log nigh the top of the hill, my back to a heavy grove, my face presented toward a wide sweeping circuit of mountains enclosing a rolling, diversified country. along the base of one long range of heights ran a lagging, fever-and-agueish river, over which was a duplicate stream of dripping mist, exactly corresponding in every meander with its parent water below. low down, here and there, shreds of vapor[213] listlessly wandered in the air, like abandoned or helmless nations or ships—or very soaky towels hung on criss-cross clothes-lines to dry. afar, over a distant village lying in a bay of the plain formed by the mountains, there rested a great flat canopy of haze, like a pall. it was the condensed smoke of the chimneys, with the condensed, exhaled breath of the villagers, prevented from dispersion by the imprisoning hills. it was too heavy and lifeless to mount of itself; so there it lay, between the village and the sky, doubtless hiding many a man with the mumps, and many a queasy child.

my eye ranged over the capacious rolling country, and over the mountains, and over the village, and over a farmhouse here and there, and over woods, groves, streams, rocks, fells—and i thought to myself, what a slight mark, after all, does man make on this huge great earth. yet the earth makes a mark on him. what a horrid accident was that on the ohio, where my good friend and thirty other good fellows were sloped into eternity at the bidding of a thick-headed engineer, who knew not a valve from a flue. and that crash on the railroad just over yon mountains there, where two[214] infatuate trains ran pell-mell into each other, and climbed and clawed each other's backs; and one locomotive was found fairly shelled like a chick, inside of a passenger car in the antagonist train; and near a score of noble hearts, a bride and her groom, and an innocent little infant, were all disembarked into the grim hulk of charon, who ferried them over, all baggageless, to some clinkered iron-foundry country or other. yet what's the use of complaining? what justice of the peace will right this matter? yea, what's the use of bothering the very heavens about it? don't the heavens themselves ordain these things—else they could not happen?

a miserable world! who would take the trouble to make a fortune in it, when he knows not how long he can keep it, for the thousand villains and asses who have the management of railroads and steamboats, and innumerable other vital things in the world. if they would make me dictator in north america awhile i'd string them up! and hang, draw, and quarter; fry, roast and boil; stew, grill, and devil them like so many turkey-legs—the rascally numskulls of stokers; i'd set them to stokering in tartarus—i would!

[215]

great improvements of the age! what! to call the facilitation of death and murder an improvement! who wants to travel so fast? my grandfather did not, and he was no fool. hark! here comes that old dragon again—that gigantic gadfly of a moloch—snort! puff! scream!—here he comes straight-bent through these vernal woods, like the asiatic cholera cantering on a camel. stand aside! here he comes, the chartered murderer! the death monopolizer! judge, jury, and hangman all together, whose victims die always without benefit of clergy. for two hundred and fifty miles that iron fiend goes yelling through the land, crying "more! more! more!" would fifty conspiring mountains fall atop of him! and, while they were about it, would they would also fall atop of that smaller dunning fiend, my creditor, who frightens the life out of me more than any locomotive—a lantern-jawed rascal, who seems to run on a railroad track too, and duns me even on sunday, all the way to church and back, and comes and sits in the same pew with me, and pretending to be polite and hand me the prayer-book opened at the proper place, pokes his pesky bill under my nose in the very[216] midst of my devotions, and so shoves himself between me and salvation; for how can one keep his temper on such occasions?

i can't pay this horrid man; and yet they say money was never so plentiful—a drug on the market; but blame me if i can get any of the drug, though there never was a sick man more in need of that particular sort of medicine. it's a lie; money ain't plenty—feel of my pocket. ha! here's a powder i was going to send to the sick baby in yonder hovel, where the irish ditcher lives. that baby has the scarlet fever. they say the measles are rife in the country too, and the varioloid, and the chicken-pox, and it's bad for teething children. and after all, i suppose many of the poor little ones, after going through all this trouble snap off short; and so they had the measles, mumps, croup, scarlet-fever, chicken-pox, cholera-morbus, summer-complaint, and all else, in vain! ah! there's that twinge of the rheumatics in my right shoulder. i got it one night on the north river, when, in a crowded boat, i gave up my berth to a sick lady, and staid on deck till morning in drizzling weather. there's the thanks one gets for charity! twinge! shoot away, ye rheumatics! ye[217] couldn't lay on worse if i were some villain who had murdered the lady instead of befriending her. dyspepsia too—i am troubled with that.

hallo! here come the calves, the two-year-olds, just turned out of the barn into the pasture, after six months of cold victuals. what a miserable-looking set, to be sure! a breaking up of a hard winter, that's certain; sharp bones sticking out like elbows; all quilted with a strange stuff dried on their flanks like layers of pancakes. hair worn quite off too, here and there; and where it ain't pancaked, or worn off, looks like the rubbed sides of mangy old hair-trunks. in fact, they are not six two-year-olds, but six abominable old hair-trunks wandering about here in this pasture.

hark! by jove, what's that? see! the very hair-trunks prick their ears at it, and stand and gaze away down into the rolling country yonder. hark again! how clear! how musical! how prolonged! what a triumphant thanksgiving of a cock-crow! "glory be to god in the highest!" it says those very words as plain as ever cock did in this world. why, why, i began to feel a little in sorts again. it ain't so very misty,[218] after all. the sun yonder is beginning to show himself; i feel warmer.

hark! there again! did ever such a blessed cock-crow so ring out over the earth before! clear, shrill, full of pluck, full of fire, full of fun, full of glee. it plainly says—"never say die!" my friends, it is extraordinary, is it not?

unwittingly, i found that i had been addressing the two-year-olds—the calves—in my enthusiasm; which shows how one's true nature will betray itself at times in the most unconscious way. for what a very two-year-old, and calf, i had been to fall into the sulks, on a hilltop too, when a cock down in the lowlands there, without discourse of reason, and quite penniless in the world, and with death hanging over him at any moment from his hungry master, sends up a cry like a very laureate celebrating the glorious victory of new orleans.

hark! there it goes again! my friends, that must be a shanghai; no domestic-born cock could crow in such prodigious exulting strains. plainly, my friends, a shanghai of the emperor of china's breed.

but my friends the hair-trunks, fairly alarmed at last by such clamorously-victorious[219] tones, were now scampering off, with their tails flirting in the air, and capering with their legs in clumsy enough sort of style, sufficiently evincing that they had not freely flourished them for the six months last past.

hark! there again! whose cock is that? who in this region can afford to buy such an extraordinary shanghai? bless me—it makes my blood bound—i feel wild. what? jumping on this rotten old log here, to flap my elbows and crow too? and just now in the doleful dumps. and all this from the simple crow of a cock. marvelous cock! but soft—this fellow now crows most lustily; but it's only morning; let's see how he'll crow about noon, and towards nightfall. come to think of it, cocks crow most lustily in the beginning of the day. their pluck ain't lasting, after all. yes, yes; even cocks have to succumb to the universal spell of tribulation: jubilant in the beginning, but down in the mouth at the end.

... "of fine mornings,

we fine lusty cocks begin our crows in gladness;

but when the eve does come we don't crow quite so much,

for then cometh despondency and madness."

[220]

the poet had this very shanghai in mind when he wrote that. but stop. there he rings out again, ten times richer, fuller, longer, more obstreperously exulting than before! in fact, that bell ought to be taken down, and this shanghai put in its place. such a crow would jollify all london, from mile-end (which is no end) to primrose hill (where there ain't any primroses), and scatter the fog.

well, i have an appetite for my breakfast this morning, if i have not had it for a week before. i meant to have only tea and toast; but i'll have coffee and eggs—no, brown stout and a beefsteak. i want something hearty. ah, here comes the down-train: white cars, flashing through the trees like a vein of silver. how cheerfully the steam-pipe chirps! gay are the passengers. there waves a handkerchief—going down to the city to eat oysters, and see their friends, and drop in at the circus. look at the mist yonder; what soft curls and undulations round the hills, and the sun weaving his rays among them. see the azure smoke of the village, like the azure tester over a bridal-bed. how bright the country looks there where the river overflowed the meadows. the old grass[221] has to knock under to the new. well, i feel the better for this walk. home now, and walk into that steak and crack that bottle of brown stout; and by the time that's drank—a quart of stout—by that time, i shall feel about as stout as samson. come to think of it, that dun may call, though. i'll just visit the woods and cut a club. i'll club him, by jove, if he duns me this day.

hark! there goes shanghai again. shanghai says, "bravo!" shanghai says, "club him!"

oh, brave cock!

i felt in rare spirits the whole morning. the dun called about eleven. i had the boy jake send the dun up. i was reading tristram shandy, and could not go down under the circumstances. the lean rascal (a lean farmer, too—think of that!) entered, and found me seated in an armchair, with my feet on the table, and the second bottle of brown stout handy, and the book under eye.

"sit down," said i, "i'll finish this chapter, and then attend to you. fine morning. ha! ha!—this is a fine joke about my uncle toby and the widow wadman! ha! ha! ha! let me read this to you."

[222]

"i have no time; i've got my noon chores to do."

"to the deuce with your chores!" said i. "don't drop your old tobacco about here, or i'll turn you out."

"sir!"

"let me read you this about the widow wadman. said the widow wadman—"

"there's my bill, sir."

"very good. just twist it up, will you—it's about my smoking-time; and hand a coal, will you, from the hearth yonder!"

"my bill, sir!" said the rascal, turning pale with rage and amazement at my unwonted air (formerly i had always dodged him with a pale face), but too prudent as yet to betray the extremity of his astonishment. "my bill, sir"—and he stiffly poked it at me.

"my friend," said i, "what a charming morning! how sweet the country looks! pray, did you hear that extraordinary cock-crow this morning? take a glass of my stout!"

"yours? first pay your debts before you offer folks your stout!"

"you think, then, that, properly speaking, i have no stout," said i, deliberately rising. "i'll[223] undeceive you. i'll show you stout of a superior brand to barclay and perkins."

without more ado, i seized that insolent dun by the slack of his coat—(and, being a lean, shad-bellied wretch, there was plenty of slack to it)—i seized him that way, tied him with a sailor-knot, and, thrusting his bill between his teeth, introduced him to the open country lying round about my place of abode.

"jake," said i, "you'll find a sack of bluenosed potatoes lying under the shed. drag it here, and pelt this pauper away; he's been begging pence of me, and i know he can work, but he's lazy. pelt him away, jake!"

bless my stars, what a crow! shanghai sent up such a perfect p?an and laudamus—such a trumpet blast of triumph, that my soul fairly snorted in me. duns!—i could have fought an army of them! plainly, shanghai was of the opinion that duns only came into the world to be kicked, hanged, bruised, battered, choked, walloped, hammered, drowned, clubbed!

returning indoors, when the exultation of my victory over the dun had a little subsided, i fell to musing over the mysterious shanghai. i had no idea i would hear him so nigh my[224] house. i wondered from what rich gentleman's yard he crowed. nor had he cut short his crows so easily as i had supposed he would. this shanghai crowed till midday, at least. would he keep a-crowing all day? i resolved to learn. again i ascended the hill. the whole country was now bathed in a rejoicing sunlight. the warm verdure was bursting all round me. teams were a-field. birds, newly arrived from the south, were blithely singing in the air. even the crows cawed with a certain unction, and seemed a shade or two less black than usual.

hark! there goes the cock! how shall i describe the crow of the shanghai at noontide! his sunrise crow was a whisper to it. it was the loudest, longest and most strangely musical crow that ever amazed mortal man. i had heard plenty of cock-crows before, and many fine ones;—but this one! so smooth, and flutelike in its very clamor—so self-possessed in its very rapture of exultation—so vast, mounting, swelling, soaring, as if spurted out from a golden throat, thrown far back. nor did it sound like the foolish, vain-glorious crow of some young sophomorean cock, who knew not[225] the world, and was beginning life in audacious gay spirits, because in wretched ignorance of what might be to come. it was the crow of a cock who crowed not without advice; the crow of a cock who knew a thing or two; the crow of a cock who had fought the world and got the better of it and was resolved to crow, though the earth should heave and the heavens should fall. it was a wise crow; an invincible crow; a philosophic crow; a crow of all crows.

i returned home once more full of reinvigorated spirits, with a dauntless sort of feeling. i thought over my debts and other troubles, and over the unlucky risings of the poor oppressed peoples abroad, and over the railroad and steamboat accidents, and over even the loss of my dear friend, with a calm, good-natured rapture of defiance, which astounded myself. i felt as though i could meet death, and invite him to dinner, and toast the catacombs with him, in pure overflow of self-reliance and a sense of universal security.

toward evening i went up to the hill once more to find whether, indeed, the glorious cock would prove game even from the rising of the sun unto the going down thereof. talk of vespers[226] or curfew!—the evening crow of the cock went out of his mighty throat all over the land and inhabited it, like xerxes from the east with his double-winged host. it was miraculous. bless me, what a crow! the cock went game to roost that night, depend upon it, victorious over the entire day, and bequeathing the echoes of his thousand crows to night.

after an unwontedly sound, refreshing sleep i rose early, feeling like a carriage-spring—light—elliptical—airy—buoyant as sturgeon-nose—and, like a foot-ball, bounded up the hill. hark! shanghai was up before me. the early bird that caught the worm—crowing like a bugle worked by an engine—lusty, loud, all jubilation. from the scattered farmhouses a multitude of other cocks were crowing, and replying to each other's crows. but they were as flageolets to a trombone. shanghai would suddenly break in, and overwhelm all their crows with his one domineering blast. he seemed to have nothing to do with any other concern. he replied to no other crow, but crowed solely by himself, on his own account, in solitary scorn and independence.

oh, brave cock!—oh, noble shanghai!—oh,[227] bird rightly offered up by the invincible socrates, in testimony of his final victory over life.

as i live, thought i, this blessed day, will i go and seek out the shanghai, and buy him, if i have to clap another mortgage on my land.

i listened attentively now, striving to mark from what direction the crow came. but it so charged and replenished, and made bountiful and overflowing all the air, that it was impossible to say from what precise point the exultation came. all that i could decide upon was this: the crow came from out of the east, and not from out of the west. i then considered with myself how far a cock-crow might be heard. in this still country, shut in, too, by mountains, sounds were audible at great distances. besides, the undulations of the land, the abuttings of the mountains into the rolling hill and valley below, produced strange echoes, and reverberations, and multiplications, and accumulations of resonance, very remarkable to hear, and very puzzling to think of. where lurked this valiant shanghai—this bird of cheerful socrates—the game-fowl greek who died unappalled? where lurked he? oh, noble cock, where are you? crow once more, my bantam![228] my princely, my imperial shanghai! my bird of the emperor of china! brother of the sun! cousin of great jove! where are you?—one crow more, and tell me your number!

hark! like a full orchestra of the cocks of all nations, forth burst the crow. but where from? there it is; but where? there was no telling, further than it came from out of the east.

after breakfast i took my stick and sallied down the road. there were many gentlemen's seats dotting the neighboring country, and i made no doubt that some of these opulent gentlemen had invested a hundred dollar bill in some royal shanghai recently imported in the ship trade wind, or the ship white squall, or the ship sovereign of the seas; for it must needs have been a brave ship with a brave name which bore the fortunes of so brave a cock. i resolved to walk the entire country, and find this noble foreigner out; but thought it would not be amiss to inquire on the way at the humblest homesteads, whether, peradventure, they had heard of a lately-imported shanghai belonging to any gentlemen settlers from the city; for it was plain that no poor farmer, no poor man of any sort, could own such an[229] oriental trophy—such a great bell of st. paul's swung in a cock's throat.

i met an old man, plowing, in a field nigh the road-side fence.

"my friend, have you heard an extraordinary cock-crow of late?"

"well, well," he drawled, "i don't know—the widow crowfoot has a cock—and squire squaretoes has a cock—and i have a cock, and they all crow. but i don't know of any on 'em with 'straordinary crows."

"good-morning to you," said i, shortly; "it's plain that you have not heard the crow of the emperor of china's chanticleer."

presently i met another old man mending a tumble-down old rail-fence. the rails were rotten, and at every move of the old man's hand they crumbled into yellow ochre. he had much better let the fence alone, or else get him new rails. and here i must say, that one cause of the sad fact why idiocy more prevails among farmers than any other class of people, is owing to their undertaking the mending of rotten rail-fences in warm, relaxing spring weather. the enterprise is a hopeless one. it is a laborious one; it is a bootless one. it is an enterprise[230] to make the heart break. vast pains squandered upon a vanity. for how can one make rotten rail-fences stand up on their rotten pins? by what magic put pitch into sticks which have lain freezing and baking through sixty consecutive winters and summers? this it is, this wretched endeavor to mend rotten rail-fences with their own rotten rails, which drives many farmers into the asylum.

on the face of the old man in question incipient idiocy was plainly marked. for, about sixty rods before him extended one of the most unhappy and desponding broken-hearted virginia rail-fences i ever saw in my life. while in a field behind, were a set of young steers, possessed as by devils, continually butting at this forlorn old fence, and breaking through it here and there, causing the old man to drop his work and chase them back within bounds. he would chase them with a piece of rail huge as goliath's beam, but as light as cork. at the first flourish, it crumbled into powder.

"my friend," said i, addressing this woeful mortal, "have you heard an extraordinary cock-crow of late?"

[231]

i might as well as have asked him if he had heard the death-tick. he stared at me with a long, bewildered, doleful, and unutterable stare, and without reply resumed his unhappy labors.

what a fool, thought i, to have asked such an uncheerful and uncheerable creature about a cheerful cock!

i walked on. i had now descended the high land where my house stood, and being in a low tract could not hear the crow of the shanghai, which doubtless overshot me there. besides, the shanghai might be at lunch of corn and oats, or taking a nap, and so interrupted his jubilations for a while.

at length, i encountered riding along the road, a portly gentleman—nay, a pursy one—of great wealth, who had recently purchased him some noble acres, and built him a noble mansion, with a goodly fowl-house attached, the fame whereof spread through all the country. thought i, here now is the owner of the shanghai.

"sir," said i, "excuse me, but i am a countryman of yours, and would ask, if so be you own any shanghais?"

[232]

"oh, yes; i have ten shanghais."

"ten!" exclaimed i, in wonder; "and do they all crow?"

"most lustily; every soul of them; i wouldn't own a cock that wouldn't crow."

"will you turn back, and show me those shanghais?"

"with pleasure: i am proud of them. they cost me, in the lump, six hundred dollars."

as i walked by the side of his horse, i was thinking to myself whether possibly i had not mistaken the harmoniously combined crowings of ten shanghais in a squad, for the supernatural crow of a single shanghai by himself.

"sir," said i, "is there one of your shanghais which far exceeds all the others in the lustiness, musicalness, and inspiring effects of his crow?"

"they crow pretty much alike, i believe," he courteously replied. "i really don't know that i could tell their crow apart."

i began to think that after all my noble chanticleer might not be in the possession of this wealthy gentleman. however, we went into his fowl-yard, and saw his shanghais. let[233] me say that hitherto i had never clapped eye on this species of imported fowl. i had heard what enormous prices were paid for them, and also that they were of an enormous size, and had somehow fancied they must be of a beauty and brilliancy proportioned both to size and price. what was my surprise, then, to see ten carrot-colored monsters, without the smallest pretension to effulgence of plumage. immediately, i determined that my royal cock was neither among these, nor could possibly be a shanghai at all; if these gigantic gallows-bird fowl were fair specimens of the true shanghai.

i walked all day, dining and resting at a farmhouse, inspecting various fowl-yards, interrogating various owners of fowls, hearkening to various crows, but discovered not the mysterious chanticleer. indeed, i had wandered so far and deviously, that i could not hear his crow. i began to suspect that this cock was a mere visitor in the country, who had taken his departure by the eleven o'clock train for the south, and was now crowing and jubilating somewhere on the verdant banks of long island sound.

but next morning, again i heard the inspiring[234] blast, again felt my blood bound in me, again felt superior to all the ills of life, again felt like turning my dun out of doors. but displeased with the reception given him at his last visit, the dun stayed away, doubtless being in a huff. silly fellow that he was to take a harmless joke in earnest.

several days passed, during which i made sundry excursions in the regions roundabout, but in vain sought the cock. still, i heard him from the hill, and sometimes from the house, and sometimes in the stillness of the night. if at times i would relapse into my doleful dumps straightway at the sound of the exultant and defiant crow, my soul, too, would turn chanticleer, and clap her wings, and throw back her throat, and breathe forth a cheerful challenge to all the world of woes.

at last, after some weeks i was necessitated to clap another mortgage on my estate, in order to pay certain debts, and among others the one i owed the dun, who of late had commenced a civil-process against me. the way the process was served was a most insulting one. in a private room i had been enjoying myself in the village tavern over a bottle[235] of philadelphia porter, and some herkimer cheese, and a roll, and having apprised the landlord, who was a friend of mine, that i would settle with him when i received my next remittances, stepped to the peg where i had hung my hat in the bar-room, to get a choice cigar i had left in the hall, when lo! i found the civil-process enveloping the cigar. when i unrolled the cigar, i unrolled the civil-process, and the constable standing by rolled out, with a thick tongue, "take notice!" and added, in a whisper, "put that in your pipe and smoke it!"

i turned short round upon the gentlemen then and there present in that bar-room. said i, "gentlemen, is this an honorable—nay, is this a lawful way of serving a civil-process? behold!"

one and all they were of opinion, that it was a highly inelegant act in the constable to take advantage of a gentleman's lunching on cheese and porter, to be so uncivil as to slip a civil-process into his hat. it was ungenerous; it was cruel; for the sudden shock of the thing coming instanter upon the lunch, would impair the proper digestion of the cheese, which is[236] proverbially not so easy of digestion as blanc-mange.

arrived at home i read the process, and felt a twinge of melancholy. hard world! hard world! here i am, as good a fellow as ever lived—hospitable—open-hearted—generous to a fault; and the fates forbid that i should possess the fortune to bless the country with my bounteousness. nay, while many a stingy curmudgeon rolls in idle gold, i, heart of nobleness as i am, i have civil-processes served on me! i bowed my head, and felt forlorn—unjustly used—abused—unappreciated—in short, miserable.

hark! like a clarion! yea, like a bolt of thunder with bells to it—came the all-glorious and defiant crow! ye gods, how it set me up again! right on my pins! yes, verily on stilts!

oh, noble cock!

plain as cock could speak, it said, "let the world and all aboard of it go to pot. do you be jolly, and never say die! what's the world compared to you? what is it, anyhow, but a lump of loam? do you be jolly!"

oh, noble cock!

"but my dear and glorious cock," mused i,[237] upon second thought, "one can't so easily send this world to pot; one can't so easily be jolly with civil-processes in his hat or hand."

hark! the crow again. plain as cock could speak, it said: "hang the process, and hang the fellow that sent it! if you have not land or cash, go and thrash the fellow, and tell him you never mean to pay him. be jolly!"

now this was the way—through the imperative intimations of the cock—that i came to clap the added mortgage on my estate; paid all my debts by fusing them into this one added bond and mortgage. thus made at ease again, i renewed my search for the noble cock. but in vain, though i heard him every day. i began to think there was some sort of deception in this mysterious thing: some wonderful ventriloquist prowled around my barns, or in my cellar, or on my roof, and was minded to be gayly mischievous. but no—what ventriloquist could so crow with such an heroic and celestial crow?

at last, one morning there came to me a certain singular man, who had sawed and split my wood in march—some five-and-thirty cords of it—and now he came for his pay. he[238] was a singular man, i say. he was tall and spare, with a long saddish face, yet somehow a latently joyous eye, which offered the strangest contrast. his air seemed staid, but undepressed. he wore a long, gray, shabby coat, and a big battered hat. this man had sawed my wood at so much a cord. he would stand and saw all day in a driving snow-storm, and never wink at it. he never spoke unless spoken to. he only sawed. saw, saw, saw—snow, snow, snow. the saw and the snow went together like two natural things. the first day this man came, he brought his dinner with him, and volunteered to eat it sitting on his buck in the snow-storm. from my window, where i was reading burton's anatomy of melancholy, i saw him in the act. i burst out of doors bareheaded. "good heavens!" cried i; "what are you doing? come in. this your dinner!"

he had a hunk of stale bread and another hunk of salt beef, wrapped in a wet newspaper, and washed his morsels down by melting a handful of fresh snow in his mouth. i took this rash man indoors, planted him by the fire, gave him a dish of hot pork and beans, and a mug of cider.

[239]

"now," said i, "don't you bring any of your damp dinners here. you work by the job, to be sure; but i'll dine you for all that."

he expressed his acknowledgments in a calm, proud, but not ungrateful way, and dispatched his meal with satisfaction to himself, and me also. it afforded me pleasure to perceive that he quaffed down his mug of cider like a man. i honored him. when i addressed him in the way of business at his buck, i did so in a guardedly respectful and deferential manner. interested in his singular aspect, struck by his wondrous intensity of application at his saw—a most wearisome and disgustful occupation to most people—i often sought to gather from him who he was, what sort of a life he led, where he was born, and so on. but he was mum. he came to saw my wood, and eat my dinners—if i chose to offer them—but not to gabble. at first, i somewhat resented his sullen silence under the circumstances. but better considering it, i honored him the more. i increased the respectfulness and deferentialness of my address toward him. i concluded within myself that this man had experienced hard times; that he had had many sore rubs in the[240] world; that he was of a solemn disposition; that he was of the mind of solomon; that he lived calmly, decorously, temperately; and though a very poor man, was, nevertheless, a highly respectable one. at times i imagined that he might even be an elder or deacon of some small country church. i thought it would not be a bad plan to run this excellent man for president of the united states. he would prove a great reformer of abuses.

his name was merrymusk. i had often thought how jolly a name for so unjolly a wight. i inquired of people whether they knew merrymusk. but it was some time before i learned much about him. he was by birth a marylander, it appeared, who had long lived in the country round about; a wandering man; until within some ten years ago, a thriftless man, though perfectly innocent of crime; a man who would work hard a month with surprising soberness, and then spend all his wages in one riotous night. in youth he had been a sailor, and run away from his ship at batavia, where he caught the fever, and came nigh dying. but he rallied, reshipped, landed home, found all his friends dead, and struck for the[241] northern interior, where he had since tarried. nine years back he had married a wife, and now had four children. his wife was become a perfect invalid; one child had the white-swelling and the rest were rickety. he and his family lived in a shanty on a lonely barren patch nigh the railroad track, where it passed close to the base of the mountain. he had bought a fine cow to have plenty of wholesome milk for his children; but the cow died during an accouchement, and he could not afford to buy another. still, his family never suffered for lack of food. he worked hard and brought it to them.

now, as i said before, having long previously sawed my wood, this merrymusk came for his pay.

"my friend," said i, "do you know of any gentleman hereabouts who owns an extraordinary cock?"

the twinkle glittered quite plain in the wood-sawyer's eye.

"i know of no gentleman," he replied, "who has what might well be called an extraordinary cock."

oh, thought i, this merrymusk is not the[242] man to enlighten me. i am afraid i shall never discover this extraordinary cock.

not having the full change to pay merrymusk, i gave him his due, as nigh as i could make it, and told him that in a day or two i would take a walk and visit his place, and hand to him the remainder. accordingly one fine morning i sallied forth upon the errand. i had much ado finding the best road to the shanty. no one seemed to know where it was exactly. it lay in a very lonely part of the country, a densely-wooded mountain on one side (which i call october mountain, on account of its bannered aspect in that month), and a thicketed swamp on the other, the railroad cutting the swamp. straight as a die the railroad cut it; many times a day tantalizing the wretched shanty with the sight of all the beauty, rank, fashion, health, trunks, silver and gold, dry-goods and groceries, brides and grooms, happy wives and husbands, flying by the lonely door—no time to stop—flash! here they are—and there they go! out of sight at both ends—as if that part of the world were only made to fly over, and not to settle upon. and this was about all the shanty saw of what people call life.

[243]

though puzzled somewhat, yet i knew the general direction where the shanty lay, and on i trudged. as i advanced, i was surprised to hear the mysterious cock crow with more and more distinctness. is it possible, thought i, that any gentleman owning a shanghai can dwell in such a lonesome, dreary region? louder and louder, nigher and nigher, sounded the glorious and defiant clarion. though somehow i may be out of the track to my wood-sawyer's, i said to myself, yet, thank heaven, i seem to be on the way toward that extraordinary cock. i was delighted with this auspicious accident. on i journeyed; while at intervals the crow sounded most invitingly, and jocundly, and superbly; and the last crow was ever nigher than the former one. at last, emerging from a thicket of elders, straight before me i saw the most resplendent creature that ever blessed the sight of man.

a cock, more like a golden eagle than a cock. a cock, more like a field marshal than a cock. a cock, more like lord nelson with all his glittering arms on, standing on the vanguard's quarter-deck going into battle, than a cock. a cock, more like the emperor charlemagne in[244] his robes at aix la chapelle, than a cock.

such a cock!

he was of a haughty size, stood haughtily on his haughty legs. his colors were red, gold, and white. the red was on his crest along, which was a mighty and symmetric crest, like unto hector's helmet, as delineated on antique shields. his plumage was snowy, traced with gold. he walked in front of the shanty, like a peer of the realm; his crest lifted, his chest heaved out, his embroidered trappings flashing in the light. his pace was wonderful. he looked like some oriental king in some magnificent italian opera.

merrymusk advanced from the door.

"pray is not that the signor beneventano?"

"sir!"

"that's the cock," said i, a little embarrassed. the truth was, my enthusiasm had betrayed me into a rather silly inadvertence. i had made a somewhat learned sort of allusion in the presence of an unlearned man. consequently, upon discovering it by his honest stare, i felt foolish; but carried it off by declaring that this was the cock.

now, during the preceding autumn i had[245] been to the city, and had chanced to be present at a performance of the italian opera. in that opera figured in some royal character a certain signor beneventano—a man of a tall, imposing person, clad in rich raiment, like to plumage, and with a most remarkable, majestic, scornful stride. the signor beneventano seemed on the point of tumbling over backward with exceeding haughtiness. and, for all the world, the proud pace of the cock seemed the very stage-pace of the signor beneventano.

hark! suddenly the cock paused, lifted his head still higher, ruffled his plumes, seemed inspired, and sent forth a lusty crow. october mountain echoed it; other mountains sent it back; still others rebounded it; it overran the country round. now i plainly perceived how it was i had chanced to hear the gladdening sound on my distant hill.

"good heavens! do you own the cock? is that cock yours?"

"is it my cock!" said merrymusk, looking slyly gleeful out of the corner of his long, solemn face.

"where did you get it?"

[246]

"it chipped the shell here. i raised it."

"you?"

hark? another crow. it might have raised the ghosts of all the pines and hemlocks ever cut down in that country. marvelous cock! having crowed, he strode on again, surrounded by a bevy of admiring hens.

"what will you take for signor beneventano?"

"sir?"

"that magic cock—what will you take for him?"

"i won't sell him."

"i will give you fifty dollars."

"pooh!"

"one hundred!"

"pish!"

"five hundred!"

"bah!"

"and you a poor man."

"no; don't i own that cock, and haven't i refused five hundred dollars for him?"

"true," said i, in profound thought; "that's a fact. you won't sell him, then?"

"no."

"will you give him?"

[247]

"no."

"will you keep him, then!" i shouted, in a rage.

"yes."

i stood awhile admiring the cock, and wondering at the man. at last i felt a redoubled admiration of the one, and a redoubled deference for the other.

"won't you step in?" said merrymusk.

"but won't the cock be prevailed upon to join us?" said i.

"yes. trumpet! hither, boy! hither!"

the cock turned round, and strode up to merrymusk.

"come!"

the cock followed us into the shanty.

"crow!"

the roof jarred.

oh, noble cock!

i turned in silence upon my entertainer. there he sat on an old battered chest, in his old battered gray coat, with patches at his knees and elbows, and a deplorably bunged hat. i glanced round the room. bare rafters overhead, but solid junks of jerked beef hanging from them. earth floor, but a heap of potatoes[248] in one corner, and a sack of indian meal in another. a blanket was strung across the apartment at the further end, from which came a woman's ailing voice and the voices of ailing children. but somehow in the ailing of these voices there seemed no complaint.

"mrs. merrymusk and children?"

"yes."

i looked at the cock. there he stood majestically in the middle of the room. he looked like a spanish grandee caught in a shower, and standing under some peasant's shed. there was a strange supernatural look of contrast about him. he irradiated the shanty; he glorified its meanness. he glorified the battered chest, and tattered gray coat, and the bunged hat. he glorified the very voices which came in ailing tones from behind the screen.

"oh, father," cried a little sickly voice, "let trumpet sound again."

"crow," cried merrymusk.

the cock threw himself into a posture. the roof jarred.

"does not this disturb mrs. merrymusk and the sick children?"

"crow again, trumpet."

[249]

the roof jarred.

"it does not disturb them, then?"

"didn't you hear 'em ask for it?"

"how is it, that your sick family like this crowing?" said i. "the cock is a glorious cock, with a glorious voice, but not exactly the sort of thing for a sick chamber, one would suppose. do they really like it?"

"don't you like it? don't it do you good? ain't it inspiring? don't it impart pluck? give stuff against despair?"

"all true," said i, removing my hat with profound humility before the brave spirit disguised in the base coat.

"but then," said i, still with some misgivings, "so loud, so wonderfully clamorous a crow, methinks might be amiss to invalids, and retard their convalescence."

"crow your best now, trumpet!"

i leaped from my chair. the cock frightened me, like some overpowering angel in the apocalypse. he seemed crowing over the fall of wicked babylon, or crowing over the triumph of righteous joshua in the vale of askelon. when i regained my composure somewhat, an[250] inquisitive thought occurred to me. i resolved to gratify it.

"merrymusk, will you present me to your wife and children?"

"yes. wife, the gentleman wants to step in."

"he is very welcome," replied a weak voice.

going behind the curtain, there lay a wasted, but strangely cheerful human face; and that was pretty much all; the body, hid by the counterpane and an old coat, seemed too shrunken to reveal itself through such impediments. at the bedside sat a pale girl, ministering. in another bed lay three children, side by side; three more pale faces.

"oh, father, we don't mislike the gentleman, but let us see trumpet too."

at a word, the cock strode behind the screen, and perched himself on the children's bed. all their wasted eyes gazed at him with a wild and spiritual delight. they seemed to sun themselves in the radiant plumage of the cock.

"better than a 'pothecary, eh," said merrymusk. "this is dr. cock himself."

we retired from the sick ones, and i reseated[251] myself again, lost in thought, over this strange household.

"you seem a glorious independent fellow," said i.

"and i don't think you a fool, and never did. sir, you are a trump."

"is there any hope of your wife's recovery?" said i, modestly seeking to turn the conversation.

"not the least."

"the children?"

"very little."

"it must be a doleful life, then, for all concerned. this lonely solitude—this shanty—hard work—hard times."

"haven't i trumpet? he's the cheerer. he crows through all; crows at the darkest: glory to god in the highest! continually he crows it."

"just the import i first ascribed to his crow, merrymusk, when first i heard it from my hill. i thought some rich nabob owned some costly shanghai; little weening any such poor man as you owned this lusty cock of a domestic breed."

"poor man like me? why call me poor? don't the cock i own glorify this otherwise inglorious,[252] lean, lantern-jawed land? didn't my cock encourage you? and i give you all this glorification away gratis. i am a great philanthropist. i am a rich man—a very rich man, and a very happy one. crow, trumpet."

the roof jarred.

i returned home in a deep mood. i was not wholly at rest concerning the soundness of merrymusk's views of things, though full of admiration for him. i was thinking on the matter before my door, when i heard the cock crow again. enough. merrymusk is right.

oh, noble cock! oh, noble man!

i did not see merrymusk for some weeks after this; but hearing the glorious and rejoicing crow, i supposed that all went as usual with him. my own frame of mind remained a rejoicing one. the cock still inspired me. i saw another mortgage piled on my plantation; but only bought another dozen of stout, and a dozen-dozen of philadelphia porter. some of my relatives died; i wore no mourning, but for three days drank stout in preference to porter, stout being of the darker color. i heard the cock crow the instant i received the unwelcome tidings.

[253]

"your health in this stout, oh, noble cock!"

i thought i would call on merrymusk again, not having seen or heard of him for some time now. approaching the place, there were no signs of motion about the shanty. i felt a strange misgiving. but the cock crew from within doors, and the boding vanished. i knocked at the door. a feeble voice bade me enter. the curtain was no longer drawn; the whole house was a hospital now. merrymusk lay on a heap of old clothes; wife and children were all in their beds. the cock was perched on an old hogshead hoop, swung from the ridge-pole in the middle of the shanty.

"you are sick, merrymusk," said i mournfully.

"no, i am well," he feebly answered.—

"crow, trumpet."

i shrunk. the strong soul in the feeble body appalled me.

but the cock crew.

the roof jarred.

"how is mrs. merrymusk?"

"well."

"and the children?"

"well. all well."

[254]

the last two words he shouted forth in a kind of wild ecstasy of triumph over ill. it was too much. his head fell back. a white napkin seemed dropped upon his face. merrymusk was dead.

an awful fear seized me.

but the cock crew.

the cock shook his plumage as if each feather were a banner. the cock hung from the shanty roof as erewhile the trophied flags from the dome of st. paul's. the cock terrified me with exceeding wonder.

i drew nigh the bedsides of the woman and children. they marked my look of strange affright; they knew what had happened.

"my good man is just dead," breathed the woman lowly. "tell me true?"

"dead," said i.

the cock crew.

she fell back, without a sigh, and through long-loving sympathy was dead.

the cock crew.

the cock shook sparkles from his golden plumage. the cock seemed in a rapture of benevolent delight. leaping from the hoop, he strode up majestically to the pile of old clothes,[255] where the wood-sawyer lay, and planted himself, like an armorial supporter, at his side. then raised one long, musical, triumphant, and final sort of a crow, with throat heaved far back, as if he meant the blast to waft the wood-sawyer's soul sheer up to the seventh heavens. then he strode, king-like, to the woman's bed. another upturned and exultant crow, mated to the former.

the pallor of the children was changed to radiance. their faces shone celestially through grime and dirt. they seemed children of emperors and kings, disguised. the cock sprang upon their bed, shook himself, and crowed, and crowed again, and still and still again. he seemed bent upon crowing the souls of the children out of their wasted bodies. he seemed bent upon rejoining instanter this whole family in the upper air. the children seemed to second his endeavors. far, deep, intense longings for release transfigured them into spirits before my eyes. i saw angels where they lay.

they were dead.

the cock shook his plumage over them. the cock crew. it was now like a bravo! like a hurrah![256] like a three-times-three! hip! hip! he strode out of the shanty. i followed. he flew upon the apex of the dwelling, spread wide his wings, sounded one supernatural note, and dropped at my feet.

the cock was dead.

if now you visit that hilly region, you will see, nigh the railroad track, just beneath october mountain, on the other side of the swamp—there you will see a gravestone, not with skull and cross-bones, but with a lusty cock in act of crowing, chiseled on it, with the words beneath:

"o death, where is thy sting?

o grave, where is thy victory?"

the wood-sawyer and his family, with the signor beneventano, lie in that spot; and i buried them, and planted the stone, which was a stone made to order; and never since then have i felt the doleful dumps, but under all circumstances crow late and early with a continual crow.

cock-a-doodle-doo!—oo!—oo!—oo!—oo!