out of eggs surprising things sometimes happen. Grotesques are born out
of eggs as out of people. The accident does not often occur--perhaps
once in a thousand births. A chicken is, you see, born that has four
legs, two pairs of wings, two heads or what not. The things do not
live. They go quickly back to the hand of their maker that has for a
moment trembled. The fact that the poor little things could not live
was one of the tragedies of life to father. He had some sort of notion
that if he could but bring into henhood or roosterhood a five-legged
hen or a two-headed rooster his fortune would be made. He dreamed of
taking the wonder about to county fairs and of growing rich by
exhibiting it to other farm-hands.

At any rate he saved all the little monstrous things that had been born
on our chicken farm. They were preserved in alcohol and put each in its
own glass bottle. These he had carefully put into a box and on our
journey into town it was carried on the wagon seat beside him. He drove
the horses with one hand and with the other clung to the box. When we
got to our destination the box was taken down at once and the bottles
removed. All during our days as keepers of a restaurant in the town of
Bidwell, Ohio, the grotesques in their little glass bottles sat on a
shelf back of the counter. Mother sometimes protested but father was a
rock on the subject of his treasure. The grotesques were, he declared,
valuable. People, he said, liked to look at strange and wonderful
things.

Did I say that we embarked in the restaurant business in the town of
Bidwell, Ohio? I exaggerated a little. The town itself lay at the foot
of a low hill and on the shore of a small river. The railroad did not
run through the town and the station was a mile away to the north at a
place called Pickleville. There had been a cider mill and pickle