The principal thing that the average school-boy remembers about Socrates is that he killed himself immediately after ordering that a cock should be sacrificed to Aesculapius; and some have held that the reason of his suicide was the vociferousness of the cock, which he wanted to kill in revenge for the misery it had caused him while he was trying to sleep or to think.
[Illustration: THE EARLY COCK] The cock is a braver bird than the eagle.

He has ever been a bold and ready warrior, and has worn a warrior's spurs from the beginning.

He has one high soldierly quality: he knows when he is whipped; for who has not seen him, when defeated in a gallant contest, sneak away to a distant-corner to stand, with ruffled feathers, upon a single leg, the very picture of humiliation and despair?
And he is vigilant, for has he not for ages revolved upon church-steeples as the emblem of watchfulness?
He has the homelier virtues.

He is a kind father and a fond as well as a multitudinous husband.

He knows how to protect his family from errant and disreputable roosters, and he is always willing to stand aside with unsatisfied appetite and permit them to devour a dainty he has found.