The History of the Hen Fever. A Humorous Record

"'Tell me, doctor,' gasped Green, 'what do you think of my Great Pagoda?'

"'Great Pagoda!' said the professor, in indignant disdain. 'That was a Struthio, – Greek, Strothous, – in other words, an ostrich. If you hadn't belonged to the genus Asinus, you'd have known that, without asking me. Good-morning, Mr. Green.'

"'Where is the monster?' cried Mrs. Green. 'I believe the poor child is killed. O, Sap, I didn't expect this of you!'

"'Be quiet, my dear,' said Green; 'it was only an experiment.'

"'An experiment, Mr. Green!' retorted the lady, sharply; 'your wife and child nearly killed, and you call it an experiment! Nurturing ostriches to devour your off-spring! I wonder you don't take to raising elephants.'

"'No danger of that, Maria,' replied her husband, meekly. 'I have "seen the elephant." And to-morrow I shall send my entire stock to the auction-room, – Shanghaes, Chittagongs, Brahma Pootras, Cochins, Warhens and Warhoos. They're nice birds, great layers, small eaters, but they —don't pay.'"

Mr. Green was cured, of course; and though his anticipations were great, yet he had his predecessors and his successors in the hen traffic, who were almost as sanguine as he, and who not only "paid through the nose" for their experience, but who came off, in the end, really, with quite as little success. Mr. Green was but one of many. Mr. Green was one of "the people."

It will be remembered that my correspondents allude to the fowls they "see in the noospapers."

I had seen these birds, in the same way, before they did. And a London dealer wrote me that he could send me a lot of Egleton's "famous" stock, "which took the three first premiums at a metropolitan show, and two descendants of which, at the close of the late exhibition, were sold at auction for forty-eight guineas ($262)."

I immediately sent out for a few of these monsters. They were described to me as being of enormous size, and feathered upon the legs; and I was now somewhat surprised to note that several of the English societies decided that the true "Cochin-China" fowl (as they term this variety) come only with feathered legs. The very stock above alluded to, however, came direct from the city of Shanghae; and duplicate birds of the same blood were delineated in the London Illustrated News. The metropolitan associations required that all Cochin-China fowls put in competition for premiums must be feathered-legged. This was a new decision, as it is well known that every importation of domestic fowl yet brought out from China direct come more or less clean-legged; and that fully one half of their progeny are so, with the most careful breeding, both in England and in this country. This was immaterial, however; and I repeated the story to my correspondents in good faith, and sent them copies of the portraits of these new, "extraordinary," "splendid" and "astonishing" hens, precisely as their history and pictures came to me. The result can be fancied. Here is the "original" portrait of one of 'em.

This was the kind of thing that "took down" the outsiders. Orders for this strain of pure blood poured in upon me, and I supplied them. I trust the purchasers were always satisfied. In my case, it might answer; but I would not recommend the practice generally of purchasing chickens out of the newspapers. Such a portrait as the above might chance to be a little fanciful; or, perhaps, it might be a trifling exaggeration, you see. Yet this was the breed that were always "put in the newspapers." You very rarely found them in your coops, though!

CHAPTER XXVI.

"POLICY THE BEST HONESTY."

This reversion of the old saying that "honesty's the best policy" seemed to have finally attained among many hen-men, and the ambition to dispose of their now large surplus stock, at the best possible prices, had become very general, while the means to accomplish it came to be immaterial, so that they got rid of their fancy poultry at fancy figures.

Nothing that could be said against me and my stock was neglected, or omitted to be said. But, as long as fowls would sell at all, I had my full share of the trade, notwithstanding this. The following veritable letter, received from a noted "breeder," in 1853, will explain itself; and it exhibits the disposition of more than one huckster still left around us. It will be observed that this gentleman called me his "friend"!

"Friend B – : What has become of all the trade? I haven't sold twenty dollars' worth of chickens, in a month! I've now got over three hundred of these curses on hand – and they're eating me up, alive. What'll we do with them? Do you want them? Will you buy them —anyhow? And give what you like for them.

"They are a better lot than you ever owned, – everybody says so, – Greys, Cochins (pure) and Shanghaes. D – n the business! I'm sick of it. My fowls and fixin's cost me over twelve hundred dollars. What do you think of an auction? Has the bottom fallen out, entirely? Could I get back two or three dollars apiece for this lot, do you think, at public sale?

"B – is stuck with about five hundred of the gormandisers. I'm glad of it – glad —glad! An't you? He always lammed you, as well as me; and though I think you can swinge the green 'uns as cutely as 'most any of 'em, he has been an eye-sore for three years that ought to be put down. He got his stock of you, he says, – but (no offence to you, friend B – ), it an't worth a cuss. All of it's sick and lousy, and he shan't sell no more fowls, if I can help it.

"Have you seen W – 's stock, lately? Isn't he a beauty! I told him, last week, he'd ought to be ashamed of himself ever to gone into this trade, at all. He's well enough off, without stealing the bread out of the mouths of them that's a long way honester than he ever was. I'll have a lick at him, yet.

"Come and see my stock, – and buy it. I don't want it. I must give it up. I'm too busy about something else. Come – will you? I don't say anything against your fowls, outside; but you know, as well as I do, that you haven't got the real thing. Bennett says you haven't, and everybody else says so. As to your 'importations,' you never had a fowl that was imported from any further off than Cape Cod, and you know it! But that is neither here nor there. I don't care a fig how much you gouge 'em. All I want is to get rid of mine. If you don't buy them, I shall sell them, – somehow, – or give them away, sure. They shan't eat me up, nohow.

"They don't eat nothing – these fowls don't! O, what an infernal humbug this is! I never got much out of it, though. I tell everybody what all the rest of you do, – of course. But I had rather keep the same number of Suffolk pigs, anyhow, so far as that's concerned. I an't afraid of your showing this letter to nobody – ha! ha! So I don't mark it 'private.' But of all the owdacious humbugs that ever this country saw, this thing is the steepest, – and you know it!

"Write me and say what you'll give me for my lot. I won't peach on you. You can buy 'em on your own terms. I want to get out of it. And you may say just what you've a mind about 'em. I'll back you, of course. Couldn't you take them, and get up another fresh guy on a 'new importation'?? That's it. Come, now, friend B – , help me out. And answer immediately. All I want is to get out of it, and catch me there again if you can!

"Yours, &c.," – .

"P.S. If you don't buy them, I shall kill the brutes, and send 'em to market; though they are too poor for that, I think."

This complimentary epistle from a brother-fancier was rather cool, but it didn't equal the following. I had more than one of this sort, too, – of which I had no occasion, for the time being, to take the slightest notice, for I had "other fish to fry," decidedly!

"Mr. Burnham. – Sir: How is it that you have the impudence to try to palm off on the public those fowls of yours for genuine 'imported ones,' when it is known that you bought them all of me, and A – , and B – ? How can you sleep nights? Don't you feel a squirming in your conscience? Or is it made of ingy-rubber, or gutter-perchy? You have made hundreds, and I don't know but thousands of dollars, by your impudence and bare-faced deceit. They are not genuine fowls. I say this bolely. I wish there was a noospaper that would show the inderpendence to print an article that I could rite for it, on this subject of poletry. If I wouldn't make you stare, and shet your eyes up, too, then I aint no judge of swindling!

"Why don't you act like a man? Carnt you? Havn't you got the pluck to own up that other people have done for you what you never had the gumption to do for yourself? Why don't you act fair, – and tell where the genuine fowls can be got, and of who? You're a doing the poultry business more hurt than all the rest of the men in the country is doing, or ever did, or ever will, sir.

"I don't mind a man's being sharp, and looking out for himself. I do that. But I carn't humbug people as you are doing, – and I won't, neither. You're sticking it into the people nicely, – don't you think you are? And they believe it, too! The people believes what you tell them, and sucks it all down, and wants more of it. And you keep a giving it to them, too! How long do you suppose such infamous things as these can last? I hope this letter will do you good. I havn't no ends to answer. I keep but a few fowls, and I have never charged over twenty-five dollars a pair for the best of them, – as you know. You get fifty or a hundred dollars a pair. So the noospapers say, but I believe you lie when they say so. You carn't come this over me! You don't pull none of that wool over my eyes! No, sir!

"If you want to get an honest living, – get it! I don't say nothin against that; you've a rite to. But don't cheat the people out of their eye-teeth, by telling these stories that you carn't prove.10 You've no right to. You sell fowls, by this means, but you don't get no clear conscience by it. It's wrong, Mr. Burnum, and you know it. While you do this, nobody can sell no fowls except you. Give other people a chance, say I. I wouldn't do this, nohow, to sell my fowls at your expense; and I go for having everybody do unto others as I would do to them. This is moral and Christian-like, and you'd better adopt it. That's my advice, and I don't charge nothing for it. So, no more at present – from

"Your, resp'y," – ."

These missives never disturbed me. Why should they? These very men would have sold, from that very stock, —had done so, repeatedly, before, – whatever a buyer sought to purchase. I never knew either of them to permit the chance of a sale to pass by him, on account of the variety of bird sought! They invariably possessed whatever was wanted. With them, "policy was the best honesty." I did not complain. I was a "hen-man," but no Mentor.

CHAPTER XXVII.

A GENUINE HUMBUG

It was now getting pretty clear to the vision of most of the initiated that the hen fever was in the midst of its height. Buyers with long purses were about, but they were not so ravenous as formerly. They talked knowingly and cautiously, and chose their fowls with more care than formerly; but still a great many samples were being circulated, and at very handsomely remunerating prices.

A gentlemanly-looking man called upon me, one day, about this time, in Boston, and introduced himself, in his own felicitous manner, something in this wise:

"How are you? Mr. Burnum, I suppose. My name is T – . I'm from Phil'delphy."

"Happy to see you, Mr. T – ," I replied. "Take a seat, sir?"

"I want to look at your fowls, Burnum," he continued, in a rather bluff manner. "I know what poultry is, I think. I've been at it, now, over thirty year; and I'd oughter know what fowls is. You're a humbug, Burnum! There's no doubt about that; and you're all a set of hums, together – you hen-men! I haven't got the fever. I'm never disturbed by no such stupid nonsense. These China fowls are an old story with me. I had 'em twenty years ago, – brought into Phil'delphy straight from Shanghae by a friend of mine."

[This gentleman had forgotten, or didn't know (or thought I didn't), that the port of Shanghae had been open to communication with this country only a dozen years or less; and so I permitted him to proceed in his remarks without offering any opposition to his assumption.]

"These big fowls never lay no eggs, Burnum. You know it as well as anybody. Do they?"

"None to hurt," I answered.

"No, no – I reck'n not," continued my visitor. "I know 'em, like a book. Can't fool me with them. They an't worth a curse to nobody. I'll go out and see yours, though, 'cause you're a good deal fairer than I expected to find you. I thought you'd try to hum me, same as I s'pose you do the rest."

"O, no!" I replied, meekly. "When I meet with gentlemen who are posted up, as you are, sir, I conceive it to be useless to attempt to urge them to possess themselves of this stock; because I am always satisfied, at first sight, what my customer is. And I govern myself accordingly. I will take you out to my place, directly. My carriage is in town, and we'll ride out together. You can see it, – but you say you don't want to purchase any?"

"No, no – that's not my object, at all. Still, I like to look at the humbugs, any way."

I was as well satisfied that this man knew very little of what he thus boldly talked of, as I also was that he had come all the way from Philadelphia purposely to buy some Chinese fowls. But I gave him no hint of this suspicion; and we arrived, an hour afterwards, at my residence in Melrose.

He examined my fowls carefully; went through all the coops and houses, and finally we entered the "green-house" where the selected animals were kept. As soon as he saw these birds, I saw that he was "a goner."

He denounced the whole race as he passed along; but when we entered this well-appointed place, he stopped. These were very respectable, and he wouldn't mind having a few of these, he said.

"What do you get for such as these?" he inquired.

"Twenty-five dollars each," I replied, "when I sell them. But they're all alike. You know it as well as I do. They're worth no such money. These fowls are well-grown, and are in good condition; but five or six shillings each is their full real value. Still, you know when 'the children cry for them,' why, we get a little more for them."

"Yes; but twenty-five dollars is a thundering hum, anyhow, Burnum! I can't go that! You mustn't think of getting no such price as that out of me, you see; 'cause you know that I know what all this bosh means. I'd like that cock and those three big hens," he added, pointing to four of my "best" birds. "That is," he continued, "if I could have them at anything like a fair rate."

"My dear sir," I responded; "you don't want any such hum as this imposed upon you. You know, evidently, what all this kind of thing signifies. But, at the same time, you see I can get this price, and do get it every day in the week, out of the 'flats' that you have been speaking of. I don't sell any of these things to gentlemen, who know, as you do, what they are, you see."

"Yes, yes!" continued the stranger; "I know; I see. I comprehend you, exactly – precisely. But I should like them four fowls. What's the lowest price you'll name for them?"

"I never have but one price, sir," I replied. "These fowls I keep here for show-birds. They are my 'sign,' you perceive – my models. The younger stock, that you have seen outside, are bred from these; and thus I am enabled to show gentlemen, when they come here, what the others will be" – (perhaps, I might have added; but I didn't).

This gentleman remained half an hour at my house, and we talked the whole subject over, at our leisure. I agreed with him in every proposition that he advanced, and he finally left me with the assurance that I had been traduced villanously. He really expected to meet with a regular sharper when he encountered me; but he was satisfied, if there was a gentleman and an honest poultry-breeder in New England, I was that fortunate individual!

I did not dispute even this assurance on his part. And when he left, I had one hundred dollars of his money, and he took away with him four of my "splendid" pure-bred Grey Shanghaes, which I sent to the cars with him when he bade me good-day.

This was but a single sample of the real humbugs that presented themselves to us, from time to time, all of whom were certain to inform us that they were "thoroughly acquainted" with the entire details of the business; all of whom had been through the routine, and "knew every rope in the ship;" none of whom were affected with the "fever" (so they always declared), and not one of whom believed, while they were thus striving to pull wool over the eyes of others, that they were all the time being "shaken down" without mercy!

This was the very class of men who, in the later days of the malady, assisted most to keep up the delusion, and to aid in carrying on the hum of the trade. To be sure, the keepers of agricultural warehouses talked, and told big stories to their poor customers, who would buy eggs and chickens of them, for a while, at round prices; true, most of the agricultural papers strove from week to week to keep up the deceit, after the editors or proprietors found their yards over-stocked with this species of property, for which they had originally paid me (or somebody else) roundly, and which they "couldn't afford to lose," though they knew it to be valueless! True, the hen-men themselves kept their advertising and the big stories of their success constantly before "the people," whom they gulled from day to day. But no portion of the community did more to "help the cause along" than did this self-sufficient, learned, know-nothing, thin-skinned class of "wise-acres," who never chanced to make much more than a considerable out of the writer of this paragraph – I think!

Among this well-informed (?) set of men there was a "John Bull" who was connected in some way with a Boston weekly, which was nominally called an agricultural sheet, but which for several years was filled with articles upon the subject of "the equality of the sexes."

His name was Pudder, or Pucker, or Padder, as nearly as I remember. From the commencement of this fever he was sorely affected, and his articles upon the merits of the different breeds of fowls he raised were very learned and instructive! He sold eggs for three, four, or five dollars a dozen, for a few weeks; but, as they didn't hatch, his game was soon blocked. Still, he stuck to this hum with the obstinacy of a "bluenose;" and his readers were indebted to his advice for possessing themselves of the most worthless mass of trash (in the shape of poultry) that ever cursed the premises of amateur. His lauded "Plymouth Rocks," his "Fawn-colored Dorkings," his "Italians," his "Drab Shanghaes," etc., sold, however; and the poor devils who read the paper, and who purchased this stuff, lived (like a good many others) to realize, to their hearts' content, after paying this fellow for being thus humbugged, the truth of the old adage that "the fool and his money is soon parted."

Still, Podder was useful – in his way – in the hen-trade. The operations of such ignorant and wilful hucksters had the effect of opening the eyes of those who desired to obtain good stock, and who were willing to pay for it. And after they had been thus fleeced, they became cautious, and procured their poultry only of "honorable" and responsible breeders (like myself), who imported and bred nothing but known pure stock.

As late as in January, 1855, a western agricultural sheet alludes to the flaming advertisement of an old hand in this traffic, and says: "It is known to all who know anything about poultry that Mr. G – has been an amateur breeder for about forty years, and is undoubtedly better 'posted,' in reference to domestic and fancy fowls, than any other man in America; and, beside this, he is an honest man, and has no 'axe to grind.' He has raised fowls, heretofore, solely for his own amusement; but now he proposes to accommodate the public by disposing of some of them."

This man is my "fat friend" in Connecticut, – who has bred and bought and sold as much trash, in the past ten years, as the best (or the worst) of us. Friend Brown, we could tell you a story worth two of yours, on this point! But – we forbear.

CHAPTER XXVIII.

BARNUM IN THE FIELD

The prince of showmen was suddenly developed as a "hen-man"! Mr. Barnum was seized, one morning, with violent spasms, and, upon finding himself safely within the friendly shelter of "Iranistan," his physicians were duly consulted, who examined his case critically, and reported that the disease lay chiefly in the head of their patient – who, it was subsequently ascertained, was suffering from a severe attack of hen fever.

Such was the violence of the demonstrations in this gentleman's case, however, and so fearful were the indications with him, even during the incipient stages of the affection, that his friends feared that Phineas T. had really contracted his "never-get-over." But, upon being informed (as I was, soon afterwards) of this case, and questioned as to his probable eventual recovery, I unhesitatingly gave it as my opinion that his friends might rest assured the humbug that could kill him was yet to be discovered; and that, so far as he was personally concerned, I entertained no sort of doubt that "he would feel much better when it was done aching." (A prediction which, I have no question, has been accurately fulfilled, ere this.)

The man who could succeed, as he had, with no-haired horses, gutta-percha mermaids, fat babies, etc., and who had gone into and out of fire-annihilators, prepared mastodons, illustrated newspapers, copper mines, defunct crystal palaces, and the like, unscathed, would scarcely be jeopardized by an attack of the prevailing malady of the day, however violently it might exhibit itself in his case. And so there was hope for Phineas, though his symptoms were really alarming.

My friend took the very best possible means for alleviating the virulence of his attack; and, looking about him for the largest-sized humbug known in the trade, he alighted upon a two-hundred-and-forty-pound Connecticut joker, who quickly offered to inform him how he could find relief.

"How shall I do it, John?" exclaimed Phineas, as his fat friend made his appearance.

"Heesiest thing in life," responded John; "hall you 'ave to do is to put yer 'and in yer pocket."

"So?" said Phineas, putting his fist gently out of sight.

"No – you aren't deep enough down yet," replied John. "Go down deeper. That's better, – that'll do."

"How much'll it cost?" queried Phineas.

"Carn't say," responded John. "You're pooty bad. There's nuth'n' in this country that'll cure you. Hi'll go hout to Hingland, if you say so, and hi can git somethin' there that'll 'elp you. It ar'n't to be 'ad in Ameriky, though."

"Sho!" exclaimed Barnum; "you don't say so! Do you think, John, that we could find something in England that would knock 'em, here?"

"Nothing else," replied John. "Hi know where they keep 'em." (John was raised in Great Britain.)

"But, John," persisted Phineas, "there's Burnham, you know, of Boston. They say he has the best poultry in the world; and I've no doubt of it, between you and I."

"Fudge!" exclaimed John; "Burn'am's a very clever fellow, hi've no manner o' doubt, and hi won't say nuth'n' ag'inst 'im; but 'ee's the wust 'umbug you ever see, since you 'ad breath. 'Ee don't know the dif'rence 'tween a Shanghi and a Cochin-Chiny – an' never did. 'Ee's a hum, 'is Burn'am. Don't go near 'im, unless you want the skin shaved hoff o' yer knuckles, clean."