"I go on working for the same reason that a hen goes on laying eggs"

H. L. Mencken’s comparison of his continued work to a hen’s instinct to lay eggs encapsulates his perspective on the nature of creativity, productivity, and perhaps even the compulsion behind meaningful labor. Work, for Mencken, is not solely driven by external motives such as financial gain, accolades, or obligation, but by an intrinsic urge that is as natural and irrepressible as the hen’s biological impulse to lay eggs. The act of laying eggs for a hen is not laden with philosophical contemplation or external incentives; it is a function of her existence, a pattern woven into her being. Mencken’s metaphor suggests that his engagement with work, likely referring to writing, reporting, and critiquing, is similarly innate, instinctual, and perhaps necessary for his own sense of purpose or well-being.

By aligning the act of working with a fundamentally natural process, Mencken rejects the idea of work as a burden or as something requiring endless justification. His work flows from him in the way that eggs are produced by a hen, inevitable, cyclical, and almost beyond conscious control. There is also a subtle undercurrent of resignation in the analogy, a recognition that one does not always choose the shape or scope of their labors; rather, it is a characteristic they are born with, a function of their nature.

This metaphor also quietly pokes fun at the often grandiose explanations people give for their life’s work. By equating his output to that of barnyard fowl, Mencken humorously demystifies both his own motives and, by extension, the motivations of others, suggesting perhaps that even the loftiest achievements are simply the outcome of basic drives at play. Careful observation and honest self-reflection lead to the awareness that much of what drives humans is automatic: like the hen, the creative or productive person creates and produces, not because they must, but because, fundamentally, they cannot help themselves.