SCRATCHING FOR A LIVING.
Mr. Nighthewind is a utilitarian. Everything around
him has to scratch, as he expresses it. He had to
scratch, he says, to get along, and he means that everything
else shall, that he controls. Mr. Bounderby was
not more exultant or boastful of his beginning than was
Nighthewind of his scratching. A morning caller found
Mr. N. out in the yard in his dressing-gown, busily
engaged with his hens, chasing them from corner to
corner, and acting by them in a very mysterious
manner. “What are you doing?” said his visitor,
thinking him a little mad. — “Doing?” said he; “why,
these hens” — shying a stick at a big rooster — “won't
scratch, as I had to; and I 'm determined they shall
scratch for a living. They are so pampered with luxurious
feed that they don't seem disposed to scratch.
Shoo! you rascals! why don't you scratch?” and Mr.
Nighthewind went again into the energetic demonstration;
but so obstinate are hens that they did n't seem
to profit by it.
