Old Stories 253
the village roosters and william smith
In one of the old New England towns there lived in days of yore a youth named William Smith. William lived at the lower end of the chief village street, Near the upper end of the same street lived a young woman with whose charms William was so smitten that his calls on her were not only frequent but protracted.
One night when he had made one of these calls, he sought his home at the magic hour when, in such towns as had steeple clocks, the bells tolled twelve. William had not gone down the street far when he was startled by the crow of a rooster. But the remarkable thing was that he clearly detected beneath its rough notes these words, “The woman rules here.” There was no doubt about what the rooster said, for it immediately repeated the words, and even more clearly, “The woman rules here.”
While William walked along pondering this strange statement, he heard the voice of a second rooster at the next house below. It said, “The man rules here. The man rules here.”
