SHE WOULD CLUCK.

Dunstan Times, Issue 702, 1 October 1875, Page 4

SHE WOULD CLUCK.

—o— They have had more trouble at our Methodist meeting-houso. Last Sunday, Bov. Mr Moody was j ist beginning his sermon, and had uttered the wonls “ Brethren, I wish to direct your attention this morning to the fourth verse of the twelfth chapter of Saint the recess beneath the pulpit. As she had just laid an egg, she interrupted Mr Moody to announce the fact to the ’congregation ; and he stopped short as she walked out into tho aisle, screeching “ Kuk-kuk-kuk-kuk-to-kno! Kuk-kuk-kuk-kuk-te-ko 1” Mr Moody contemplated her for a moment, and then concluded to go on ; but the sound of his voice seemed to provoke her to rivalry, and so she put on a ■pressure of five or six pounds to the square inch, and made such a racket that the preacher stopped again, and said :

“ Will Deacon Crimes please remove that disgraceful chicken from the meeting-hoijse 1” • The deacon rose and proceeded with the task. He first tried to drive her towards the door, hut she dodged him, and, still clucking vigorously, got under the seat in the frent pew. Then the deacon seized his umbiella and’ scooped her out into the aisTe again, after which he tried to “ shoo” her towards the door; but she darted into a pew, hopped over the partition, came down. in the opposite pew, and in the side aisle, making a noise like a steam planing mill. The deacon didn’t like to climb over alter her, so lie went around, and just as lie got into the side aisle the lien flew over into the middle aisle again. Then the boys in the gallery laughed, and the deacon began to grow red in the face.

At last Mr Binns came out of his pnw to he’p, and as both he and the deacon made a dash at the chicken from opposite directions she flew up with a wild cluck to the gallery and p mchod on the edge, while she gave excited expression to her views by emitting about five hundred clucks a minute. The deacon flung a hymnbook at her to scare her down again, but be missed her, and hit Billy Jones, a Sunday school scholar, in the eye. Then another boy.in the gallery made a dash at her, and reached so far over that he tumbled and fell on Mrs Miskey’s spring bonnet, wher-eupon she said out loud that he was predestined to the gallows. The crash scared' the hen, and. she flew over and roosted on the stove-pipe that ran along just under the ceiling, fairly howling with fright. In order to bring her down the deacon and Mr Brans both beaton the lower part of the pipe with their' umbrellas, and at the fifth .or sixth knock they pipe separated and about forty feet of it came down with a crash, emptying a barrel or two of soot over the congregation. There were women in that congregation who went home looking as if they had beep working in a coal mine, and wishing they could stab Deacon Grimes without being bung for murder. The hen -came down with the stove-pipe, and as she flew by Mr Binns be made a dash at her with his umbrella and knocked her clear through a fifteen dollar pane of glass, whereupon she landed in the street and hopped off cluckinginsanely. Then Mr Moody adjourned the congregation. They are going to expel the owner of that hen from church when they discover his identity.