The Normal Record. December 1905

              THE   NORMAL   RECORD
hay or he would have  been  stiff  this  morning.    Last  night was  a
freezer for such as have no more feathers than him.''
Kind hearted Mother Simpkins took the tiny half-naked creature
between her two warm ample palms and placed him in a shoe box,
filled with cozy woolen rags. Carefully she pulled the clothe snugly
over his head and placed him on a chair behind the kitchen range.
With a bent silver teaspoon she introduced some cornmeal, mixed
with sweet milK into the yawning chasm of his wide open beak.
This process continued until his pangs of starvation had presumably
ceased for his bald head began to nod on his threadlike neck and the
bulging eyes closed sleepily. With a feeble "peep, peep," he sank
back among the billows of woolen rags and he was afloat with
Winken, Blinken and Nod.
"He is a regular beauty" said the farmer, slapping his knee
with his slouchy felt hat, "and as chirp as a sparrow. We'll keep
him till next year and he'll make a right smart dish for Christmas
dinner.''
Mother Simpkin's warm bed and creamy cornmeal wrought
wonders with Buff. His concave sides became convex, so exceedingly so that Buff looked like Mrs. Simpkin's round soup ladel, turned
upside down, with his crany neck protruding for a handle. Any day
the "thwack, thwack" of Buff's flat horny feet could be heard in the
wake of Mrs. Simpkins as he followed always in the hope of getting
some stray scrap from her philanthropic hands.
Mrs. Simpkins had piled her shining cups and saucers in neat
rows in the highest shelf of the china closet and laid her solid silver
knives and forks in the drawer with their tines turned scrupulously
toward the kitchen door.
"Now I must attend to those milk pails. I always do dread the
end to the dishwashing. Milk pails are so greasy that I always get
clean hot water,'' soliquised Mrs. Simpkins as she poured a steaming flood from the nasal of the black iron teakettle and turned again
to her work.
"Why where is my soap? I always put it on the aluminum wire
soap tray Hiram brought me from town but it isn't there now or else
my eyesight is failing. Hiram did say I needed spectacles yesterday
when I gave him that shirt with a button off without noticing it. But
where is that soap? I must be getting absent minded as well as
blind if I carried it into the pantry with me." And Mrs. Simpkins
trotted away in quest of the lost article. "Peep, peep," came a shrill
discordant speech from under the pantry window.
"Why what ails that turkey?" Mrs. Simpkins rushed out to see
Buff with a sticky yellow substance dripping over the sides of his
mandibles and trailing on the porch.
"My home-made soap that I have just been looking for, as I live.
That turkey will surely die." But a generous dose of warm water
and cayenne pepper worked a miraculous cure.
This was the opening act of the long comedy of which Buff was
to be chief actor.
His next appearence was on the following wash day. Mrs.
Simpkins had risen early and been at her washtub betimes. At noon
a long line of immaculate clothes was flaunting in the jaunty breeze.
Just as Father and Mother Simpkins were sitting down to dinner
Hiram exclaimed:
"Look out of that window!" Mrs Simpkins turned to see Buff
parading triumphantly up and down the clothes line like a trapeze
performer at Barnum's. Each time he lifted his foot a sprawling,
muddy track was imprinted on the spotless garments.
"Buff, you get down. Shoo, shoo!" shouted Mrs. Simpkins, waving
both arms and her apron in a vain attempt to depose the monarch.
Buff cocked his head on one side, winked his large beady eye at his
mistress and calmly continued his pastime of pecking buttons off the
array of shirts and dresses.    He was persuaded to give up his position