Excerpts

The feeding of the Cock is a matter of much observation: for some will prosper with one kind of food, and some with another. But the general allowance is, in the morning a handful of Oats, and at night a little Barly or Wheat, with as much fresh water as he listeth to drink.

The Aseel cock is short in the leg, broad in the breast, upright in carriage, with a cruel, relentless eye. There is, in him, the look of a bird that has known combat since before the days of recorded history; and I will not scruple to say that he is, of all the poultry I have known, the most *game*.

The Modern Game is the most peculiar of all our poultry — half eagle, half serpent, and all game.

The passing of the pit was not, in the end, a question of cruelty. The pit passed because the men who kept it stopped being the kind of men who kept it. The bird remained; the culture around him did not.

Game is not courage. A cock may be courageous without being game, and game without being courageous. To be *game* is to fight when you cannot win, when your body is broken, when the only sensible thing is to quit. Game is the refusal of refusal.

The Shamo is, in its way, a kind of feathered samurai — every line of the body a study in controlled ferocity.

They fought like a gamecock, and Sumter was the most obstinate man I ever saw.

The cock, when he first crows, recalls men to their work, and at the second crow puts them in mind of the things they have to do. He is a creature of much courage, and will fight with one of his own kind; and he is the most observant of all birds, for he knows his master, and runs to him when he is called.