my business in a place like this; there is another rooster around the
corner been crowing all day and I can't get at him. Look you, I'm no
common rooster; I'm no chicken just raised for the Town Authorities
to eat; I'm a warrior. Just look at these legs and these spurs--." And
just as my friend was struggling to get his foot up through the slats,
a washwoman in the second story emptied her soapsuds over the coop.
He disappeared under the shower, amid the wild screaming of the hens.
A moment later a bedraggled head, with one eye closed by suds, looked
out through the side bars and remarked in a saddened voice--"I suppose
the city authorities would be satisfied now--if they could see this."
The sudden change in my old friend from a warrior to a bundle of wet
feathers shocked me into graver thoughts.

Somehow, I have never seen a coop of chickens in all its glory on the
sidewalk, that I did not think of the French Revolution and the Bastile.
You have seen the picture--I cannot think of the painter's name now--of
the members of the old regime in the prison amusing themselves, not
knowing whose name was to be called next for the guillotine? To me
there is a miniature human world in a chicken coop. All under sentence
of death, and all eating and drinking, and clucking and crowing as if
they were going to last forever. All scrambling and fighting over the
grains of daily corn, even though the hand of the fatal purchaser is
already descending into the mouth of the coop. Like their human brethren
who do not wear feathers, the tallest and the strongest gets his head
up through the slats and gets wider views of the world. He often
mistakes the single street he can see for the Universe and crows out
his discovery until he is picked out of the coop and hurried off to
lose his head, an operation which teaches him that in fact he has
discovered nothing. How like his brother, man!