In the case of the other method mentioned for raising poultry, your friend takes along a covered vessel with a charcoal fire in it, and you carry a long slender plank. This is a frosty night, understand. Arrived at the tree, or fence, or other henroost (your own if you are an idiot), you warm the end of your plank in your friend’s fire vessel, and then raise it and ease it up gently against a sleeping chicken’s foot. If the subject of your attention is a true bird, he will return thanks with a sleepy cluck or two.

The Black Spanish is an exceedingly fine bird and a costly one. Thirty-five dollars is the usual figure, and fifty is not an uncommon price for a specimen. Even its eggs are worth from a dollar to a dollar and a half apiece. The best way to raise the Black Spanish fowl is to go late in the evening and raise coop and all. The reason I recommend this method is that, the birds being so valuable, the owners do not permit them to roost around promiscuously, they put them in a coop as strong as a fireproof safe and keep it in the kitchen at night. The method I speak of is not always a bright and satisfying success, and yet there are so many little articles of interest about a kitchen, that if you fail on the coop you can generally bring away something else. I brought away a nice steel trap one night, worth ninety cents.

But what is the use in my pouring out my whole intellect on this subject? I have shown the Western New York Poultry Society that they have taken to their bosom[4] a member who is not a chicken by any means, but a man who knows all about poultry, and is just as high up in the most efficient methods of raising it as the president of the institution himself. I thank these gentlemen for the honorary membership they have conferred upon me, and shall stand at all times ready and willing to testify my good feeling by deeds as well as by this hastily written advice and information. Whenever they are ready to go to raising poultry, let them call for me any evening after eleven o’clock.

I do not wish to write of the personal habits of these strange creatures solely, but also of certain curious details of various kinds concerning them. Knowing the Twins intimately, I feel that I am peculiarly well qualified for the task I have taken upon myself.

The Siamese Twins are naturally tender and affectionate indisposition, and have clung to each other with singular fidelity throughout a long and eventful life. Even as children they were inseparable companions; and it was noticed that they always seemed to prefer each other’s society to that of any other persons. They nearly always played together; and, their mother was so accustomed to this peculiarity, that, whenever both of them chanced to be lost, she usually only hunted for one of them. She knew that when she found that one she would find his brother somewhere in the immediate neighborhood.

As men, the Twins have not always lived in perfect accord; but still there has always been a bond between them which made them unwilling to go away from each other. They have even occupied the same house, and it is believed that they have never failed to even sleep together on any night since they were born.[5] The Twins always go to bed at the same time; but Chang usually gets up about an hour before his brother. Chang does all the indoor work and Eng runs all the errands. This is because Eng likes to go out. However, Chang always goes along. Eng is a Baptist, but Chang is a Roman Catholic; still, to please his brother, Chang agreed to be baptized at the same time that Eng was, on condition that it should not “count.” During the war they were strong partisans, and both fought – Eng on the Union side and Chang on the Confederate. They took each other prisoners at Seven Oaks, but the proofs of capture were so evenly balanced in favor of each, that a general army court had to be assembled to determine which one was properly the captor and which the captive. The jury agreed to consider them both prisoners, and then exchange them.