"...They are like ordinary nests, except that they have doors like a bootjack hanging on hinges from the top, the points of the inverted 'V' resting on the inside of a sill so that it can only open inward."

"Very well, we will make them, and then none of the old maids in the neighborhood will be any the wiser."

So the trap nests were…

"…From the time they hung the blue ribbon on her coop, she always had an audience to the end of the show. She was well trained and took it all as a matter of course. She showed herself front, three-quarters, profile, back, almost as regularly as a revolving show case. But she listened to the praise on every hand with composure, the more so as much…

"…She was bought at a risk by a man that knew his business and intended to give her a fighting chance--which was all she asked. She was carried far, far from shows and the fear of shows, to a settled life and natural conditions. And she amply repaid everything that was done for her, and came straight back to life, and before spring was well…

"…Here was precisely what the editor had always feared—that someone would follow his instructions to the letter, and therefore it had been part of his instructions that they should do no such thing. Before everything he had advised the use of judgment in keeping hens. So that if sister Martha had followed his own instructions to the letter, be it…

"Old Welch did not care about having his neighbors in when he was getting ready for the show, because, as he said, 'The laity don't understand, and can't be expected to.'

Still, he did not admit there was anything to conceal. He used to say, 'I guess 'tis fair enough to groom and tame the birds a little before showing.' He scorned the defence…

"Suddenly I saw the trap nest in a new light. Before that it had been associated in my mind with big egg stories and line breeding for eggs. But it has no necessary connection with either. One needn't abuse his trap nests to make his hens too prolific for the stamina of the stock, if such a thing is possible; neither need he lie about their…

..."Let me say here that for his purpose no more ideal place than Dr. Bricault’s could be found. One of the pleasantest spots in an unusually attractive town, it is calculated to add materially to the effectiveness of its white feathered population. It is high and dry without being arid. In fact every square foot of it would be available for almost…

"...All hens in a flock look pretty much alike at first glance, and it is hard to pick out individual characteristics. But I had to say something.

'Perhaps you mean they vary somewhat in size. You have some very white birds.'

'I mean they're all sorts and kinds. I've got some very white birds, and I've got some not so white. I've got some big…

"...Reading the poultry papers is precisely like talking hens with the most intelligent and enlightened, and where is the poultryman with soul so dead that he doesn't like to talk hens with almost anyone? It is not invariably educational, and one does not expect it to be, if he is an old hand; but it does stimulate and it does strengthen one in his…

"Mr. Call remained a seeker for truth to the end of his days in the hen business....

'What are you feeding?' was his stock question, and though there was a discouraging sameness to the replies he got, he persevered with a devotion worthy of a loftier cause. He felt there was something his hens lacked that once found would make them lay every day…

"It is no matter how much Dalkins paid for the bird; the point is that the man who sold it to him somehow got the impression that he did not pay enough--that he would have paid more. He could not have denied that Dalkins paid him all he asked. So that he had himself to blame if it was not enough. But he got to talking as if he had been cheated--and…

"The man with the courage of his convictions was home from the Score Card Poultry Show with a ten-dollar pullet, and the fact got into the local papers and his neighbors dropped by to condole with him.
'Can you see that much money in a hen?' said one.
'Wasn't it this way?' said another, 'the man you bought her of bought another of you for the…