DREAMS, BUSY DREAMS.

Otago Witness, Issue 2652, 11 January 1905, Page 31

DREAMS, BUSY DREAMS.

I had heard of this chicken business 1 , How they say it's a beautiful thing, To &it in your porch in the evening, And hear your own biddies sing. So I read' all the poultry papers That I could borrow or find ; And the germ of the chicken fever Got firmly lodged in my mmd. So I purchased a pen of chickens Of a popular standard breed ; And placed them on a city lot To which I held the deed. I furnished them suitable quarters I worked 'til I did tire; I then went in to supper, and My old arm-chair near the fire. As I pondered the situation And the eggs these hens> would lay; I began to figure on paper, And the figures ran this way. In the. very first year of the business I raised one thousand head; I hadn't a bit of trouble — Nary a chick of the bunch fell dead. Of course I sold off the roosters, But I kept four hundred liens ; These roosters paid all expenses, And left me forty good pens. — Francis E. Bates, from Missouri. And then the poet goes on to tell how he in his dreams became financially like unto John D. Rockefeller, from the proceeds of his chickens, and he was rolling gloriously in his wealth until he happened to wake up, as> so many other poultry enthusiasts have done, and found it all a. diesum