Number Two, named Queen Mab. Always crows to the music of a sweet-voiced Steinway. Is in all other respects an amiable and exemplary hen. Number Three is a black hen, now three years old. Has laid eggs. Number Four crowed regularly every morning, when the cock did. When she was a little over a year old, she and her seven babes were stolen from a wild cherry-tree, where they went to bed, by a fox, who came up on an old log. Number Five crowed irregularly. Raised several broods of chicks. Lived to be four or five years old. Number Six crowed chiefly in the fall, when the young chicks were practising (no doubt to encourage them). Lived to the remarkable age of nine years, and was then decapitated. Number Seven raised a large brood of chickens. Their papa was killed at about the time for them to begin to crow, and one morning she flew up on the fence and crowed with all her might. Continued it until they had learned, and stopped. Was called Old Sam. Her end was the soup-pot. Number Eight, an old speckled hen. Took to crowing after a raid on the poultry-yard had deprived it of every rooster. Crowed as well as anybody. Number Nine lived twenty-five years ago. Witness has forgotten whether she ever did anything but crow. Had a wicked name, which I shall not give. Number Ten laid eggs. Number Eleven crowed repeatedly and often spunkily after the roosters had been killed, never while they were alive. Number Twelve crows sometimes in the presence of the rooster, chiefly when alone. Most energetic in crowing. Numbers Thirteen and Fourteen have simply the fact of their existence recorded. Now, mere proverb-mongers, bear in mind: In the whole country only fourteen well-defined crowing hens,--at the worst, not a very crying evil. Of the fourteen, only one is recorded as having come to a bad end, and that end had no connection with the crowing, but occurred while she was engaged in the faithful discharge of her maternal duties. Seven are reported as bearing an excellent domestic character, a blessing to the society which they adorned. Against the remaining seven not a syllable of reproach is breathed; but if there had been any evil thing in them, who believes it would not have been learned and conned by rote and cast into our teeth? In the case of five, their crowing was not only innocent, but a preëminent virtue, a manly crown set upon every feminine excellence. Inconsistency? It is a white and shining word for the black quality to which I applied it. Men, the indictment is quashed. You are ruled out of court. Take your couplet and depart, giving thanks that you are not prosecuted for defamation of character.