People sometimes suddenly reduce their consumption of alcohol almost to the point of total abstention for a great variety of reasons. Jim Smith, an Australian gentleman, who married an Hungarian girl, became a temporary abstainer for quite a rare reason: because of chickens.

He never, of course, was a drunkard or anything near that, he only used to have a few occasional drinks, like every average person. The main difference between him and the latter was not as much in the quantity, as in the quality of the brewage he used to consume.

Owing to the habit he preserved from those blessed days, when he was an Australian Immigration Officer in Europe, he drank only genuine French brandy. Although he now was only a small shot in his native country, and every penny now was of a great value for him while he was building a new life for himself and his young wife, he still used to buy a bottle of French cognac every fortnight. This helped him to preserve some sense of continuity and kept his wavering self-confidence under control. A bottle was enough for him and his friends, who used to drop in now and then to have a chat with him and his wife. No more was required.

Then his life suddenly ran off its normal course with regards to French brandy.

The cause of all this trouble was, we must admit, his wife, as often happens where expensive drinks are concerned.

She was, we must mention, born in a mansion, the daughter of a country squire, and although she grew up in Budapest and used to spend only part of her school holidays on her father's estate, she was inclined to believe that she was an expert in husbandry, particularly in poultry breeding. So she came upon the idea that it would be a good thing to make some use of her knowledge of chicken farming and to start keeping a few hens to have fresh, cheap eggs as a relief to their budget.

She gave her husband no peace until he reluctantly built a nice chicken coop on the backyard of their temporary home. Then she bought a dozen grown-up hens and a big, magnificent rooster, and placed them in the new coop.

The chickens, according to the vendor's assertion, were supposed to be good layers, but in their new home they bluntly refused to lay eggs. And no wonder that they did. Excitement, caused by the transfer to new place and by the change of surroundings and living conditions, could hardly fail to have a disturbing effect on their delicate nervous system, putting them out of the normal psychological balance required for laying eggs.

"The best remedy for this trouble is fresh, unsalted butter," said Mrs. Smith, "just as they did on my father's estate."

And she started to feed her sterile hens with fresh butter.

The chickens liked butter very much and they consumed it in great quantities. As a result of such a diet, they acquired a nice, well-groomed appearance, but still laid no eggs.

Mrs. Smith admired her hens and was quite happy with her ability to handle the situation.

The only trouble was that they grew too heavy and became unable to get on their perch by their own efforts. It became necessary to lift them on the perch manually every night.

Before long, Mrs. Smith so spoiled her chickens that they would not fall asleep unless they got a good-night kiss from her. Neither would the rooster.

Finally even Mrs. Smith's kiss wouldn't satisfy them and they refused to be quiet on their perch until Mr. Smith, too, would kiss them, So it became his additional daily duty to give a good-night kiss to every hen in succession, as his wife did. Both parties concerned, i.e. his wife as well as hens, unjustly expected that he would perform that duty with utmost enthusiasm. As to the rooster, he wasn't eager for Mr. Smith's kiss at all, he wished to be kissed by Mrs. Smith only.

Then a hen suddenly laid an egg, but immediately ate it up herself. The next day the same happened again, Mr. Smith then saw a shocking scene: his wife brought the naughty hen into the kitchen, forced its mouth open, and poured into it a table-spoonful of his expensive cognac.

"What are you doing?" he asked in bewilderment.

"I am alienating this hen form eating its eggs," replied his wife quietly. "French brandy is the best remedy for such a habit. My dad always used to treat his hens with French brandy."

"Don't tell me fairy-tales, please. Your dad would rather drink his French brandy himself," argued Mr. Smith.

"He would never fail to leave some brandy for his chickens," replied Mrs. Smith. "Besides, all peasants in my father's village used to treat their egg-eating hens with French brandy."

"Nonsense. Nobody in your father's village ever saw French brandy," objected Mr. Smith.

"Allright, then they might have treated them with home-made brandy, but I am sure that French brandy is even better for that purpose. You just wait and see what a beneficial effect your French brandy will have."

Mr. Smith shook his head incredulously.

"If I were a hen," he said, "and my punishment for eating each egg were a table-spoonful of the most expensive French brandy, I would not fail to draw some conclusions there from. I would break my eggs every day to get my serving of French brandy. I am afraid this hen will reason in a similar manner."

"Hens are much cleverer than you, my dear!" replied Mrs. Smith. "They will never come upon such silly ideas!"

"My only hope is that our hens are sillier than myself," was the only thing Mr. Smith could hope for.

It turned out, however, that hens were not sillier than Mr. Smith, at least as far as French brandy was concerned.

The naughty hen drew the right conclusions from its experience and began to break its eggs every day. Other hens, too, assumed the same way of acting and began laying eggs in the meantime. As soon as an egg was laid, the hen concerned would quickly break it, eat it up, smearing as much as possible of its beak with yolk, run to the kitchen window under the eyes of Mrs. Smith, and stay there with its mouth wide open until she came out and gave it a table-spoonful of French brandy.

It wasn't long before all hens gathered at a certain hour of the day under the kitchen window in expectation of their daily drink. Finally even the rooster was able to work out what it was all about, He joined the hens in eating their eggs and would come in their company to the kitchen window. There he would push his breast forward, stretch his head upward, open his yolk-smeared beak as wide as he could and stay so in front of the hen's formation until French brandy was duly served.

The rooster's behaviour caused so much annoyance to Mrs. Smith that she punished him always with at least a double serving of French brandy.

As a result of such methods of healing mischievous chooks, Mr. Smith was always sober, for more often than not there was no brandy left for him when he wished to have a drink himself, but not so chickens.

After having received their daily serving of cognac, the hens would stagger around the backyard, their wings loosely lowered, and cackle in a disorderly manner. As to the rooster, he would either beat its wings dashingly and crow ecstatically, reeling around in irregular circles, or just stand for a long while on one spot upon his unfirm feet, with his head bent down and his body quivering, and make strange noises, which were not unlike suppressed human laughter.

From time to time Mr. Smith tried to protest against such a, foolish waste of his brandy, but to no avail.

"Never mind, your brandy is not wasted," consoled Mrs. Smith. "There is no doubt that I shall finally break their bad habit. Just have patience. On my father's estate, as I have told you already, this method had great success."

"It could be so," sighed Mr. Smith. "Nevertheless I still object that my expensive brandy is being fed to chickens and I am left with none."

"Shame on you, you petty selfish man!" reproached Mrs. Smith. "You should be glad that your brandy is being used for a good purpose instead of being wastefully poured down your greedy throat."

There was nothing Mr. Smith could do. For the sake of domestic peace, he just had to put up with things as they were, in a vague hope that some solution might come one day somehow.

The hoped for solution was, however, slow to come. Nevertheless it came at last. It happened as follows.

One Saturday morning Mrs. Smith told her husband: "Jimmy, I must go out, as I have an appointment with my hairdresser, and I leave my hens in your care. Don't forget to give a table-spoonful of brandy to anyone, whose beak bears some marks of yolk. Please, take care not to drink the brandy yourself instead of the chickens!"

Before she left, she thoroughly explained to her husband how important it was, if one wished to have successful final results, for the treatment to be uninterrupted.

Before long, the whole family of chickens, headed by the rooster himself, stood in front of the kitchen window, beaks wide open, in expectation of the daily helping of French brandy.

Mr. Smith watched this picture for a while with dismay, and didn't know what course of action to take. Suddenly a bright idea flashed through his mind.

He took a flask of caster oil from a shelf and gave a table-spoonful of it to every hen. As to the rooster, he got a much more generous serving.

Next day his wife triumphantly brought almost a dozen big whole eggs from the chicken coop.

"Look what effect your brandy had, you unbelievable Thomas!" she said jubilantly. "I only wonder why these eggs are so dirty?" she added wistfully.

"My French brandy might be too strong for their delicate digestive system," suggested Mr. Smith.

Since that memorable day the chickens' bad habit disappeared as if by a stroke of a magic wand. Neither hens nor rooster interfered with eggs any more. Neither did they come near the kitchen window any more, but rather kept at a respectable distance therefrom. Mrs. Smith was jubilant.

"I told you that French cognac helps," she boasted. "Now you see yourself that I was right. Always listen to your wife's advice, and you will go further in your life than you are now."

"It seems that French brandy is a mighty medicine indeed," Mr. Smith agreed. "Whenever any hen or rooster sees a bottle or a spoon in somebody's hand, it runs away in panic as if from the pestilence. None wishes to have my brandy any more."

And now everything is as it should be. The hens lay eggs regularly and are always sober, Mr. Smith, of course, lays no eggs, but is sometimes tipsy.