A handsome black Spanish rooster strutted forward to the platform, and stretching his neck, called the audience to order with his clear-toned “How-do-you-do? I am the ‘Cock-o’-the-walk,’” he explained, “a term which men are pleased to borrow and apply to themselves. They rely upon me to give them warning of the approach of day, and then grumble because I disturb their slumbers. How can they expect to wake up without having their slumbers disturbed? That’s what I would like to know. They rely upon me to eat the worms and bugs and grasshoppers that destroy their gardens, and then chase me with stones and dogs when they find me in their gardens doing my duty. “They pen me up, often for days at a time, with insufficient food and water, and do not even deign an apology for their neglect. “My wives supply numerous eggs for men’s food, yet they wring our necks without mercy if we venture to eat an egg ourselves when they have forgotten to feed us. ‘As full as an egg is of meat,’ is a comparison which might properly be balanced with ‘As full as a man is of inconsistency.’ “If men would attend to their business and scratch for a living as I do, the world would be a far better place than it is today.” He ended amid prolonged applause, and walked proudly to a conspicuous perch in the sunshine. By this time there was much excitement among the audience, who all signified a desire to speak at once. While the chairman was busy quieting them with most vigorous barks, a monkey with much agility made his way over the heads of the audience, and leaped to the platform, where he was ready to make his profoundest bows to the assembly the moment quiet reigned. “You may consider me an alien, since I hail from a far country, yet I am truly American—for even South America reveres the Stars and Stripes,” he said, and his words were applauded by the very ones who had but a moment previous frowned at his audacity. “I hold myself the superior of mankind since many of their scientists assert that the human race are but highly developed monkeys. To be sure, a few haughty fellows have lately declared that monkeys are but the offspring of degenerate men, but we monkeys resent such assertions as uncalled-for insults. Why, it is bad enough to have to endure the thought that possibly—mind you, I say possibly, not probably—possibly men have descended from our race. There is no monkey but what lives up to the best of his God-given instincts, whereas, on the other hand, there is no man that does at all times the very best that he knows. Therefore, by all the rules of logic, the monkey is superior to the man, and must be thus considered by all fair-minded judges. “This, however, is but a prologue to my more serious remarks. I have only been presenting my credentials to this court.