Bags of corn were consumed in a flash,
"shorts" were never long before their eager gaze, they went for every
kind of nourishment provided for the rest of the menagerie. A goat is
supposed to have a champion appetite and digestion, but a duck--at least
one of my ducks--leaves a goat so far behind that he never could regain
his reputation for omniverosity. They were too antique to be eaten
themselves--their longevity entitled them to respect; they could not be
disposed of by the shrewdest market man to the least particular of
boarding-house providers; I could only regard them with amazement and
horror and let them go on eating me out of house and home and
purse-strings.
But at last I knew. I asked an honest man from afar, who called to sell
something, why those ducks would not lay a single egg. He looked at them
critically and wrote to me the next day:
"DEAR MADAM: The reason your ducks won't lay is because they're too
old to live and the bigest part of 'em is drakes.
Respectfully,
JONAS HURLBERT."
I hear that there are more ducks in the Chinese Empire than in all the
world outside of it. They are kept by the Celestials on every farm, on
the private and public roads, on streets of cities, and on all the
lakes, ponds, rivers, streams, and brooks in the country. That is the
secret of their lack of progress. What time have they to advance after
the ducks are fed and cared for? No male inhabitant could ever squeeze
out a leisure half-hour to visit a barber, hence their long queues.
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