To Raise Poultry by Mark Twain

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To Raise Poultry

by Mark Twain



A letter written to a Poultry Society that had conferred a complimentary membership upon the author. Written about 1870.



Seriously, from early youth I have taken an especial interest in the subject of poultry-raising, and so this membership touches a ready sympathy in my breast. Even as a schoolboy, poultry-raising was a study with me, and I may say without egotism that as early as the age of seventeen I was acquainted with all the best and speediest methods of raising chickens, from raising them off a roost by burning lucifer matches under their noses, down to lifting them off a fence on a frosty night by insinuating the end of a warm board under their heels. By the time I was twenty years old, I really suppose I had raised more poultry than any one individual in all the section round about there. The very chickens came to know my talent by and by. The youth of both sexes ceased to paw the earth for worms, and old roosters that came to crow, "remained to pray," when I passed by.

I have had so much experience in the raising of fowls that I cannot but think that a few hints from me might be useful to the society. The two methods I have already touched upon are very simple, and are only used in the raising of the commonest class of fowls; one is for summer, the other for winter. In the one case you start out with a friend along about eleven o'clock' on a summer's night (not later, because in some states-- especially in California and Oregon--chickens always rouse up just at midnight and crow from ten to thirty minutes, according to the ease or difficulty they experience in getting the public waked up), and your friend carries with him a sack. Arrived at the henroost (your neighbor's, not your own), you light a match and hold it under first one and then another pullet's nose until they are willing to go into that bag without making any trouble about it. You then return home, either taking the bag with you or leaving it behind, according as circumstances shall dictate. N. B.--I have seen the time when it was eligible and appropriate to leave the sack behind and walk off with considerable velocity, without ever leaving any word where to send it.

In the case of the other method mentioned for raising poultry, your friend takes along a covered vessel with a charcoal fire in it, and you carry a long slender plank. This is a frosty night, understand. Arrived at the tree, or fence, or other henroost (your own if you are an idiot), you warm the end of your plank in your friend's fire vessel, and then raise it aloft and ease it up gently against a slumbering chicken's foot. If the subject of your attentions is a true bird, he will infallibly return thanks with a sleepy cluck or two, and step out and take up quarters on the plank, thus becoming so conspicuously accessory before the fact to his own murder as to make it a grave question in our minds as it once was in the mind of Blackstone, whether he is not really and deliberately, committing suicide in the second degree. [But you enter into a contemplation of these legal refinements subsequently not then.]

When you wish to raise a fine, large, donkey voiced Shanghai rooster, you do it with a lasso, just as you would a bull. It is because he must choked, and choked effectually, too. It is the only good, certain way, for whenever he mentions a matter which he is cordially interested in, the chances are ninety-nine in a hundred that he secures somebody else's immediate attention to it too, whether it day or night.

The Black Spanish is an exceedingly fine bird and a costly one. Thirty-five dollars is the usual figure and fifty a not uncommon price for a specimen. Even its eggs are worth from a dollar to a dollar and a half apiece, and yet are so unwholesome that the city physician seldom or never orders them for the workhouse.

Still I have once or twice procured as high as a dozen at a time for nothing, in the dark of the moon. The best way to raise the Black Spanish fowl is to go late in the evening and raise coop and all. The reason I recommend this method is that, the birds being so valuable, the owners do not permit them to roost around promiscuously, they put them in a coop as strong as a fireproof safe and keep it in the kitchen at night. The method I speak of is not always a bright and satisfying success, and yet there are so many little articles of vertu about a kitchen, that if you fail on the coop you can generally bring away something else. I brought away a nice steel trap one night, worth ninety cents.



But what is the use in my pouring out my whole intellect on this subject? I have shown the Western New York Poultry Society that they have taken to their bosom a party who is not a spring chicken by any means, but a man who knows all about poultry, and is just as high up in the most efficient methods of raising it as the president of the institution himself. I thank these gentlemen for the honorary membership they have conferred upon me, and shall stand at all times ready and willing to testify my good feeling and my official zeal by deeds as well as by this hastily penned advice and information. Whenever they are ready to go to raising poultry, let them call for me any evening after eleven o'clock.

Mark Twain on Biography Out Loud

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He said, “I came in with Halley’s Comet in 1835. It is coming again next year, and I expect to go out with it. It will be the greatest disappointment of my life if I don’t go out with Halley’s Comet. The Almighty has said, no doubt: “Now here are these two unaccountable freaks; they came in together, they must go out together.” This great American author did die in 1910 with the next visit of Haley’s Comet, and though he is better known by his pen name, his characters are a symbol of American humor and ingenuity. He was first author to type a manuscript on a new invention called “the typewriter”. In a moment, we’ll become better acquainted with the writer of what has been called “The Great American Novel”–

Today on Biography

Samuel Langehorne Clemens is better known as Mark Twain, a pen name which also takes its meaning from measurements of river depth. Calling out “by the Mark Twain” on a riverboat means the sounding rope is out two fathoms, or twain. This meant there was 12 feet of water in the river. Wherever he came up with the name, Samuel Clemens produced some of the most memorable characters in American Literature in books like “Tom Sawyer” and “Huckleberry Finn” – a book some call the Great American Novel. Working in his youth as a printer’s apprentice after his father’s death, he later worked as a printer in several major U.S. cities. He said, “Always do right. This will gratify some people, and astonish the rest.” In a related vein, he said, “When in doubt, tell the truth” and “If you tell the truth you don’t have to remember anything.”

He then spent two years learning the intricacies of the Mississippi to qualify as a steamboat pilot. He once remarked, “I have never let my schooling interfere with my education.” He convinced his brother to come and work on the river with him.

Clemens had an unusual dream two weeks before the death of his brother Henry, foreseeing how his brother would die in an explosion while working on a steamboat. After the Civil War began, travel on the Mississippi was significantly less, and Samuel Clemens then joined his brother on a trip to Nevada, where Orion Clemens was to serve as secretary to the governor of the Nevada territory. Mark Twain documents his many adventures through the west and his other travels, first becoming known for his short story “The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County.”

A very successful writer, Twain was notorious for investing in new inventions and spending all of his earnings. He once said, “I am opposed to millionaires, but it would be dangerous to offer me the position.”

After a world tour giving lectures, Samuel Clemens returned to the United States in 1900 with his debts paid. He was a promoter of the abolition of slavery, and spoke in favor of granting the right to vote to women.

Famous for his wit, he once said of the government, “Suppose you were an idiot. And suppose you were a member of Congress. But I repeat myself.”

He also quipped, “Be respectful to your superiors, if you have any.”

He also once said, “The only reason why God created man is because he was disappointed with the monkey.”

Samuel Clemens helped us laugh about the problems of the world, and as he once said, “Against the assault of Laughter nothing can stand.”

When one of his cousins died, reports circulated that Samuel Clemens was dead. He replied, “The reports of my death are greatly exaggerated.”

Once hearing himself praised in an introduction he said, “I was sorry to have my name mentioned as one of the great authors, because they have a sad habit of dying off. Chaucer is dead, Spencer is dead, so is Milton, so is Shakespeare, and I’m not feeling so well myself.”

Ernest Hemingway once said of Mark Twain, “All modern American literature comes from one book by Mark Twain called, Adventures of Huckleberry Finn.”

Mark Twain’s prediction that he would go out with Haley’s Comet was prescient. He died one day after the comet made its closest approach. Upon hearing of Twain’s death, President William Howard Taft said, “Mark Twain gave pleasure – real intellectual enjoyment – to millions, and his works will continue to give such pleasure to millions yet to come… His humor was American, but he was nearly as much appreciated by Englishmen and people of other countries as by his own countrymen. He has made an enduring part of American literature.”

Samuel Clemens once contemplated his choice of final destinations and concluded, “..[H]eaven for climate, Hell for society.”