Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER III. THE FIRST FOWL-SHOW IN BOSTON. Never in the history of modern bubbles, probably, did any mania exceed in ridiculousness or ludicrousness, or in the number of its victims surpass this inexplicable humbug, the hen fever. Kings and queens and nobility, senators and governors, mayors and councilmen, ministers, doctors and lawyers, merchants and tradesmen, the aristocrat and the humble, farmers and mechanics, gentlemen and commoners, old men and young men, women and children, rich and poor, white, black and gray,? everybody was more or less seriously affected by this Curious epidemic. The press of the country, far and near, was alive with accounts of extraordinary pullets,
enormous eggs (laid on the tables of the editors), astounding prices obtained for individual specimens of rare poultry; and all sorts of people, of every trade and profession and calling in life, were on the qui vive, and joined in the hue-and-cry, regarding the suddenly and newly ascertained feet thathens laid eggs - sometimes; or, that somebody’s crower was heavier, larger, or higher on the legs (and consequently higher in value), than somebody else’s crower. And the first exhibition of the society with the long name came off duly, at last, as agreed upon by the people, and myself. Thepeople ! By this term is ordinarily meant the body-politic, the multitude, the citizens at large, the voters, the ? the ? a ? the masses; the well, no matter ! At the period of which I am now writing, the term signified the hen-men. This covered the whole ground, at that time. Everybody was included, and thus nobody was left outside! At this firSt show, the committee
flattered themselves
(and who ever heard of, or from, a committee that did n’t do this!) that never, within the …
