_] Yes, Cocks affecting incongruous forms,
Cocks crowned with cocoa-palm coiffures--Hear me talk like the Peacock!
I lapse into alliteration! [_Finding his fun in bewildering them with
cackling guttural volubility._] Yes, Cockerels cockaded with cockles,
Cockatrice-headed Cockasters, cock-eyed Cockatoos! Not content to be
common Cocks, your crotchet it was to be what but crack Cocks? Yes,
Fashion, to be accounted of thy flock, these chuckle-headed Cocks craved
to be Super-cocks. But know ye not, ye crazy Cocks, one cannot be so
queer a Cock, but there may occur a queerer Cock? Let some Cock come
whose coccyx boasts a more flamboyant shock, and you pass like childish
measles, croup or chicken-pox! Consider that to-morrow, high
Cockalorums, fancy Cocks, consider that day after to-morrow,
cheese-capped goblet-crested Cocks, in spite of curly hackle and
cauliflowered hocks, a more fantastic Cock than ever may creep out of
a--box! For the Cock-fancier, to diversify his stock, may more
fantastically still combine his Cutcutdaycuts and his Cocks, and you
will be no more--sad Cuckoos made a mock!--but old rococo Cocks beside
this more coquettish Cock!
A COCK
And how, may one learn from you, can a Cock secure himself against
becoming rococo?
CHANTECLER
One royal way there is: to think only of crowing like a right and proper
Cock!
A COCK
[_Haughtily._] We are well known, I beg to state, for our exceptionally
fine crowing!
CHANTECLER
Known to whom?
SCENE FIFTH
THE SAME, _three_ CHICKENS, _noticeable among the rest for a certain
jaunty pertness of gait and demeanour, who for a minute or so have been
moving among the artificial_ COCKS.
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