I might as well 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 labours. 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 that 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?’ ‘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 I saw his Shanghais. Let 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-coloured 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.