Part 12

I listened attentively now, striving to mark from what direction the crow came. But it so charged and replenished, and made bountiful and overflowing all the air, that it was impossible to say from what precise point the exultation came. All that I could decide upon was this: the crow came from out of the east, and not from out of the west. I then considered with myself how far a cock-crow might be heard. In this still country, shut in, too, by mountains, sounds were audible at great distances. Besides, the undulations of the land, the abuttings of the mountains into the rolling hill and valley below, produced strange echoes, and reverberations, and multiplications, and accumulations of resonance, very remarkable to hear, and very puzzling to think of. Where lurked this valiant Shanghai--this bird of cheerful Socrates--the game-fowl Greek who died unappalled? Where lurked he? Oh, noble cock, where are you? Crow once more, my Bantam! my princely, my imperial Shanghai! my bird of the Emperor of China! Brother of the Sun! Cousin of great Jove! where are you?--one crow more, and tell me your number!

Hark! like a full orchestra of the cocks of all nations, forth burst the crow. But where from? There it is; but where? There was no telling, further than it came from out the east.

After breakfast I took my stick and sallied down the road. There were many gentlemen’s seats dotting the neighbouring country, and I made no doubt that some of these opulent gentlemen had invested a hundred-dollar bill in some royal Shanghai recently imported in the ship Trade Wind, or the ship White Squall, or the ship Sovereign of the Seas; for it must needs have been a brave ship with a brave name which bore the fortunes of so brave a cock. I resolved to walk the entire country, and find this noble foreigner out; but thought it would not be amiss to inquire on the way at the humblest homesteads, whether, peradventure, they had heard of a lately-imported Shanghai belonging to any of the gentlemen settlers from the city; for it was plain that no poor farmer, no poor man of any sort, could own such an oriental trophy, such a Great Bell of St. Paul’s swung in a cock’s throat.

I met an old man, ploughing, in a field nigh the road-side fence.

‘My friend, have you heard an extraordinary cock-crow of late?’

‘Well, well,’ he drawled, ‘I don’t know--the Widow Crowfoot has a cock--and Squire Squaretoes has a cock--and I have a cock, and they all crow. But I don’t know of any on ’em with ’strordinary crows.’

‘Good morning to you,’ said I, shortly; ‘it’s plain that you have not heard the crow of the Emperor of China’s chanticleer.’

Presently I met another old man mending a tumble-down old rail-fence. The rails were rotten, and at every move of the old man’s hand they crumbled into yellow ochre. He had much better let the fence alone, or else get him new rails. And here I must say, that one cause of the sad fact why idiocy more prevails among farmers than any other class of people, is owing to their undertaking the mending of rotten rail-fences in warm, relaxing spring weather. The enterprise is a hopeless one. It is a laborious one; it is a bootless one. It is an enterprise to make the heart break. Vast pains squandered upon a vanity. For how can one make rotten rail-fences stand up on their rotten pins? By what magic put pith into sticks which have lain freezing and baking through sixty consecutive winters and summers? This it is, this wretched endeavour to mend rotten rail-fences with their own rotten rails, which drives many farmers into the asylum.

On the face of the old man in question incipient idiocy was plainly marked. For, about sixty rods before him extended one of the most unhappy and desponding broken-hearted Virginia rail-fences I ever saw in my life. While in a field behind, were a set of young steers, possessed as by devils, continually butting at this forlorn old fence, and breaking through it here and there, causing the old man to drop his work and chase them back within bounds. He would chase them with a piece of rail huge as Goliath’s beam, but as light as cork. At the first flourish, it crumbled into powder.

‘My friend,’ said I, addressing this woeful mortal, ‘have you heard an extraordinary cock-crow of late?’

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.

I walked all day, dining and resting at a farm-house, inspecting various fowl-yards, interrogating various owners of fowls, hearkening to various crows, but discovered not the mysterious chanticleer. Indeed, I had wandered so far and deviously, that I could not hear his crow. I began to suspect that this cock was a mere visitor in the country, who had taken his departure by the eleven o’clock train from the south, and was now crowing and jubilating somewhere on the verdant banks of Long Island Sound.

But next morning, again I heard the inspiring blast, again felt my blood bound in me, again felt superior to all the ills of life, again felt like turning my dun out of doors. But displeased with the reception given him at his last visit, the dun stayed away, doubtless being in a huff. Silly fellow that he was, to take a harmless joke in earnest.

Several days passed, during which I made sundry excursions in the regions round about, but in vain sought the cock. Still, I heard him from the hill, and sometimes from the house, and sometimes in the stillness of the night. If at times I would relapse into my doleful dumps, straightway at the sound of the exultant and defiant crow, my soul, too, would turn chanticleer, and clap her wings, and throw back her throat, and breathe forth a cheerful challenge to all the world of woes.

At last, after some weeks I was necessitated to clap another mortgage on my estate in order to pay certain debts, and among others the one I owed the dun, who of late had commenced a civil-process against me. The way the process was served was a most insulting one. In a private room I had been enjoying myself in the village tavern over a bottle of Philadelphia porter, and some Herkimer cheese, and a roll, and having apprised the landlord, who was a friend of mine, that I would settle with him when I received my next remittances, stepped to the peg where I had hung my hat in the bar-room, to get a choice cigar I had left in the hall, when lo! I found the civil-process enveloping the cigar. When I unrolled the cigar, I unrolled the civil-process, and the constable standing by rolled out, with a thick tongue, ‘Take notice!’ and added, in a whisper, ‘Put that in your pipe and smoke it!’

I turned short round upon the gentlemen then and there present in that bar-room. Said I, ‘Gentlemen, is this an honourable--nay, is this a lawful way of serving a civil-process? Behold!’

One and all they were of opinion that it was a highly inelegant act in the constable to take advantage of a gentleman’s lunching on cheese and porter, to be so uncivil as to slip a civil-process into his hat. It was ungenerous; it was cruel; for the sudden shock of the thing coming instanter upon the lunch would impair the proper digestion of the cheese, which is proverbially not so easy of digestion as blanc-mange.

Arrived home, I read the process, and felt a twinge of melancholy. Hard world! hard world! Here I am, as good a fellow as ever lived--hospitable--open-hearted--generous to a fault: and the Fates forbid that I should possess the fortune to bless the country with my bounteousness. Nay, while many a stingy curmudgeon rolls in idle gold, I, heart of nobleness as I am, I have civil-processes served on me! I bowed my head, and felt forlorn--unjustly used--abused--unappreciated--in short, miserable.

Hark! like a clarion! yea, like a jolly bolt of thunder with bells to it--came the all-glorious and defiant crow! Ye gods, how it set me up again! Right on my pins! Yea, verily on stilts!

Oh, noble cock!

Plain as cock could speak, it said: ‘Let the world and all aboard of it go to pot. Do you be jolly, and never say die. What’s the world compared to you? What is it anyhow but a lump of loam? Do you be jolly!’

Oh, noble cock!

‘But my dear and glorious cock,’ mused I, upon second thought, ‘one can’t so easily send this world to pot; one can’t so easily be jolly with civil-processes in his hat or hand.’

Hark! the crow again. Plain as cock could speak, it said: ‘Hang the process, and hang the fellow that sent it! If you have not land or cash, go and thrash the fellow, and tell him you never mean to pay him. Be jolly!’

Now this was the way--through the imperative intimations of the cock--that I came to clap the added mortgage on my estate; paid all my debts by fusing them into this one added bond and mortgage. Thus made at ease again, I renewed my search for the noble cock. But in vain, though I heard him every day. I began to think there was some sort of deception in this mysterious thing: some wonderful ventriloquist prowled around my barns, or in my cellar, or on my roof, and was minded to be gaily mischievous. But no--what ventriloquist could so crow with such an heroic and celestial crow?

At last, one morning there came to me a certain singular man, who had sawed and split my wood in March--some five-and-thirty cords of it--and now he came for his pay. He was a singular man, I say. He was tall and spare, with a long, saddish face, yet somehow a latently joyous eye, which offered the strangest contrast. His air seemed staid, but undepressed. He wore a long, gray, shabby coat, and a big battered hat. This man had sawed my wood at so much a cord. He would stand and saw all day long in a driving snowstorm, and never wink at it. He never spoke unless spoken to. He only sawed. Saw, saw, saw--snow, snow, snow. The saw and the snow went together like two natural things. The first day this man came, he brought his dinner with him, and volunteered to eat it sitting on his buck in the snowstorm. From my window, where I was reading Burton’s _Anatomy of Melancholy_, I saw him in the act. I burst out of doors bare-headed. ‘Good heavens!’ cried I; ‘what are you doing? Come in. _This_ your dinner!’

He had a hunk of stale bread and another hunk of salt beef, wrapped in a wet newspaper, and washed his morsels down by melting a handful of fresh snow in his mouth. I took this rash man indoors, planted him by the fire, gave him a dish of hot pork and beans, and a mug of cider.

‘Now,’ said I, ‘don’t you bring any of your damp dinners here. You work by the job, to be sure, but I’ll dine you for all that.’

He expressed his acknowledgments in a calm, proud, but not ungrateful way, and dispatched his meal with satisfaction to himself, and me also. It afforded me pleasure to perceive that he quaffed down his mug of cider like a man. I honoured him. When I addressed him in the way of business at his buck, I did so in a guardedly respectful and deferential manner. Interested in his singular aspect, struck by his wondrous intensity of application at his saw--a most wearisome and disgustful occupation to most people--I often sought to gather from him who he was, what sort of a life he led, where he was born, and so on. But he was mum. He came to saw my wood, and eat my dinners--if I chose to offer them--but not to gabble. At first I somewhat resented his sullen silence under the circumstances. But better considering it, I honoured him the more. I increased the respectfulness and deferentialness of my address toward him. I concluded within myself that this man had experienced hard times; that he had had many sore rubs in the world; that he was of a solemn disposition; that he was of the mind of Solomon; that he lived calmly, decorously, temperately; and though a very poor man, was, nevertheless, a highly respectable one. At times I imagined that he might even be an elder or deacon of some small country church. I thought it would not be a bad plan to run this excellent man for President of the United States. He would prove a great reformer of abuses.

His name was Merrymusk. I had often thought how jolly a name for so unjolly a wight. I inquired of people whether they knew Merrymusk. But it was some time before I learned much about him. He was by birth a Marylander, it appeared, who had long lived in the country round about; a wandering man; until within some ten years ago, a thriftless man, though perfectly innocent of crime; a man who would work hard a month with surprising soberness, and then spend all his wages in one riotous night. In youth he had been a sailor, and run away from his ship at Batavia, where he caught the fever, and came nigh dying. But he rallied, reshipped, landed home, found all his friends dead, and struck for the Northern interior, where he had since tarried. Nine years back he had married a wife, and now had four children. His wife was become a perfect invalid; one child had the white-swelling, and the rest were rickety. He and his family lived in a shanty on a lonely barren patch nigh the railroad-track, where it passed close to the base of a mountain. He had bought a fine cow to have plenty of wholesome milk for his children; but the cow died during an accouchement, and he could not afford to buy another. Still, his family never suffered for lack of food. He worked hard and brought it to them.

Now, as I said before, having long previously sawed my wood, this Merrymusk came for his pay.

‘My friend,’ said I, ‘do you know of any gentleman hereabouts who owns an extraordinary cock?’

The twinkle glittered quite plain in the wood-sawyer’s eye.

‘I know of no _gentleman_,’ he replied, ‘who has what might well be called an extraordinary cock.’

Oh, thought I, this Merrymusk is not the man to enlighten me. I am afraid I shall never discover this extraordinary cock.

Not having the full change to pay Merrymusk, I gave him his due, as nigh as I could make it, and told him that in a day or two I would take a walk and visit his place, and hand him the remainder. Accordingly one fine morning I sallied forth upon the errand. I had much ado finding the best road to the shanty. No one seemed to know where it was exactly. It lay in a very lonely part of the country, a densely-wooded mountain on one side (which I call October Mountain, on account of its bannered aspect in that month), and a thicketed swamp on the other, the railroad cutting the swamp. Straight as a die the railroad cut it; many times a day tantalising the wretched shanty with the sight of all the beauty, rank, fashion, health, trunks, silver and gold, dry-goods and groceries, brides and grooms, happy wives and husbands, flying by the lonely door--no time to stop--flash! here they are--and there they go!--out of sight at both ends--as if that part of the world were only made to fly over, and not to settle upon. And this was about all the shanty saw of what people call ‘life.’

Though puzzled somewhat, yet I knew the general direction where the shanty lay, and on I trudged. As I advanced, I was surprised to hear the mysterious cock crow with more and more distinctness. Is it possible, thought I, that any gentleman owning a Shanghai can dwell in such a lonesome, dreary region? Louder and louder, nigher and nigher, sounded the glorious and defiant clarion. Though somehow I may be out of the track to my wood-sawyer’s, I said to myself, yet, thank Heaven, I seem to be on the way toward that extraordinary cock. I was delighted with this auspicious accident. On I journeyed; while at intervals the crow sounded most invitingly, and jocundly, and superbly; and the last crow was ever nigher than the former one. At last, emerging from a thicket of elders, straight before me I saw the most resplendent creature that ever blessed the sight of man.

A cock, more like a golden eagle than a cock. A cock, more like a field-marshal than a cock. A cock, more like Lord Nelson with all his glittering arms on, standing on the _Vanguard’s_ quarter-deck going into battle, than a cock. A cock, more like the Emperor Charlemagne in his robes at Aix-la-Chapelle, than a cock.

Such a cock!

He was of a haughty size, stood haughtily on his haughty legs. His colours were red, gold, and white. The red was on his crest alone, which was a mighty and symmetric crest, like unto Hector’s helmet, as delineated on antique shields. His plumage was snowy, traced with gold. He walked in front of the shanty, like a peer of the realm; his crest lifted, his chest heaved out, his embroidered trappings flashing in the light. His pace was wonderful. He looked like some noble foreigner. He looked like some Oriental king in some magnificent Italian opera.

Merrymusk advanced from the door.

‘Pray, is not that the Signor Beneventano?’

‘Sir!’

‘That’s the cock,’ said I, a little embarrassed. The truth was, my enthusiasm had betrayed me into a rather silly inadvertence. I had made a somewhat learned sort of allusion in the presence of an unlearned man. Consequently, upon discovering it by his honest stare, I felt foolish; but carried it off by declaring that _this was the cock_.

Now, during the preceding autumn I had been to the city, and had chanced to be present at a performance of the Italian Opera. In that opera figured in some royal character a certain Signor Beneventano--a man of a tall, imposing person, clad in rich raiment, like to plumage, and with a most remarkable, majestic, scornful stride. The Signor Beneventano seemed on the point of tumbling over backward with exceeding haughtiness. And, for all the world, the proud pace of the cock seemed the very stage-pace of the Signor Beneventano.

Hark! Suddenly the cock paused, lifted his head still higher, ruffled his plumes, seemed inspired, and sent forth a lusty crow. October Mountain echoed it; other mountains sent it back; still others rebounded it; it overran the country round. Now I plainly perceived how it was I had chanced to hear the gladdening sound on my distant hill.

‘Good heavens! do you own the cock? Is that cock yours?’

‘Is it my cock!’ said Merrymusk, looking slyly gleeful out of the corner of his long, solemn face.

‘Where did you get it?’

‘It chipped the shell here. I raised it.’

‘You?’

Hark! Another crow. It might have raised the ghosts of all the pines and hemlocks ever cut down in that country. Marvellous cock! Having crowed, he strode on again, surrounded by a bevy of admiring hens.

‘What will you take for Signor Beneventano?’

‘Sir?’

‘That magic cock!--what will you take for him?’

‘I won’t sell him.’

‘I will give you fifty dollars.’

‘Pooh!’

‘One hundred!’

‘Pish!’

‘Five hundred!’

‘Bah!’

‘And you a poor man?’

‘No; don’t I own that cock, and haven’t I refused five hundred dollars for him?’

‘True,’ said I, in profound thought; ‘that’s a fact. You won’t sell him, then?’

‘No.’

‘Will you give him?’

‘No.’

‘Will you _keep_ him, then!’ I shouted, in a rage.

‘Yes.’

I stood a while admiring the cock, and wondering at the man. At last I felt a redoubled admiration of the one, and a redoubled deference for the other.

‘Won’t you step in?’ said Merrymusk.

‘But won’t the cock be prevailed upon to join us?’ said I.

‘Yes. Trumpet! hither, boy! hither!’

The cock turned round, and strode up to Merrymusk.

‘Come!’

The cock followed us into the shanty.

‘Crow!’

The roof jarred.

Oh, noble cock!