Excerpt
A POMPOUS old gander who lived in a barn-yard thought himself wiser than the rest of the creatures, and so decided to instruct them.
He called together all the fowls in the barn-yard, and the pigeons off the barn-roof, and told them to listen to him.
They gathered around and listened very earnestly, for they thought they would learn a great deal of wisdom.
"The first thing for you to learn," said the gander, "is to speak my language. It is very silly for you to chatter as you do. Now we will all say, 'honk!' one, two, three,—'honk!'"
The creatures all tried very hard to say "honk!" but the sounds they made were so remarkable that I cannot write them, and none of them sounded like "honk!"
The gander was very angry.
"How stupid you are!" he cried. "Now you all must practise till you learn it. Do not let me hear a peep or cluck or a coo! You must all 'honk' when you have anything to say."
So they obediently tried to do as he said.
When the little brown hen laid an egg, instead of making the fact known with her sharp little "cut—cut—cut-cut-ah-cut!" as a well-ordered hen should do, she ran around the barn-yard trying to say, "honk! honk!"
But nobody heard her, and nobody came to look for the egg.
The guinea-fowls way down in the pasture ceased calling "la croik! la croik!" and there was no way of finding where they had hid their nests. In the afternoon, when their shrill cries should have warned the farmers that it was going to rain, they were still honking, or trying to, so the nicely dried hay got wet.
Next morning chanticleer, instead of rousing the place with his lusty crow, made an effort at honking that could not be heard a stone's throw away, and so the whole farm overslept.
All day there was a Babel of sounds in the barn-yard. The turkeys left off gobbling and made a queer sound that they thought was "honk!" the ducks left off quacking, the chicks left off peeping, and said nothing at all, for "honk!" was too big a mouthful for them; and the soft billing and cooing of the doves were turned into an ugly harsh sound.
Things were indeed getting into a dreadful state, and they grew worse, instead of better.
The hens forgot to lay eggs, the doves became proud and pompous like the gander, and as for the turkey gobblers, they kept the place in an uproar, for they thought they could really honk! and they never ceased from morning till night.
There's no telling what it all would have come to if there hadn't been one in the barn-yard, with an ear that could hear something besides the dreadful discords.
One night the little brown hen was roosting alone in the top of the hen-house. All at once she was awakened by the sweetest song she had ever heard.
She called to her chicks and to some of her companions to wake up and listen; but they were sleepy and soon dozed off again, so the little brown hen was left listening alone.
"I will ask the gander what this beautiful song means," she said. "He knows everything."
So she awoke the gander and asked him who was singing the beautiful song, and what it meant.
The gander said gruffly: "It is the nightingale. I do not know what her song means....