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. Marvellous cock! But soft--this fellow now crows most lustily; but it’s only morning; let’s see how he’ll crow about noon, and toward nightfall. Come to think of it, cocks crow mostly 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 eve does come we don’t crow quite so much, For then cometh despondency and madness.’ The poet had this very Shanghai in his mind when he wrote that. But stop. There he rings out again, ten times richer, fuller, longer, more obstreperously exulting than before! Why, this is equal to hearing the great bell of St. Paul’s rung at a coronation! 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 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 drunk--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!