THE DOCTORS HEN HUNT.

Mataura Ensign, Volume 11, Issue 821, 2 November 1888, Page 2

THE DOCTORS HEN HUNT.

A certain professor bates to have the subject of hens mentioned in his presence — especial ly black hens — and the reason of it is thie. One Sunday afternoon, a great many years^agr, the professor, wbo is a doctor of divinity, was sunning himself in the High Street. Now, the High Street is ore of the most crowded and fashionabletborougfcfares, and as the doctor threaded his way through the well-dressed throng his dignified, air bespoke a consciousness of uncommon merit. It so chanced, however, that a rampant gust of wind came romping up the street, stirring up whirls of dust as it came ; and whether it was the conspicuous gloss on the professor s hat that caught the wind's eye (for the wind has an eye, or how could mariners see in it ? ), or whether it was the baldness of the professor's head made his bat slide off more easily, is uncertain ; but certain it is tbat his waa. the only: hat tbat blew off".

The professor went off after his hat ; but everybody knows what trouble Mr. Pickwick had to catch his hat — and the professor was not unlike Mr. Pick r wick in figure ; — so, instead of having cau»ht hie hat;, the latter bad obtained a' commanding lead before it blew up against the gate-post of a stable-yard. It so chanced that a hen — a black hen — -was taking an afternoon stroll just inside the yard, and was so frightened by the noiae the hat made against the wooden gate that she skuttled out into the pavement". As soon as she arrived there, the confusion of finding herself, among so many! people cent her in a flurry of dust and feathers-rfor hens always run the wrong way — out into the road. Once in the road, ehe met the professor, and immediately concluding (in spite of his clergical attire ) that he was there to hunt her, away she went down the road in front of him. Nor was her surmise as to his intentions ill-founded --for the professor was terribly shortsighted — asd what with the dust and the heat and excitement of the chase, he never detected the fraud that was being palmed off upon him, but started off after the hen as blithely as he had hitherto hunted his hat. But though a hat is hard to catcb, a hen is worße ; and any healthy fowl can easily outrun a doctor of divinity. So down the High street, with a stately throng of fashionable folk all agape on either hand went this worse than G-ilpin race ; and while the hen kicked up the dust and the professor** bald head went flashing in. the sun, the undergraduates bent out of their windows on each side of the road and cheered pursuer and pursued, and laid long odds upon the hen. And in all probability the professor would have hunted that hen till sun-down, had not a carriage come up the road to meet them, when to his horror he saw his hat— his j well-behaved, clerical hat, that had sat quietly on his head every Sunday for the last two months — take wings and fly clucking over the crowded pavement to settle on a wall. And to this day the professor hates the man who talks to him of hens.