THE FULL-BLOODED COW.
We never had any one drop in about six o'clock p.m. whom we were more glad
to see than Fielding, the Orange County farmer. In the first place, he
always had a good appetite, and it did not make much difference what we had
to eat. He would not nibble about the end of a piece of bread, undecided as
to whether he had better take it, nor sit sipping his tea as though the
doctor had ordered him to take only ten drops at a time, mixed with a
little sugar and hot water. Perpetual contact with fresh air and the fields
and the mountains gave him a healthy body, while the religion that he
learned in the little church down by the mill-dam kept him in healthy
spirits. Fielding keeps a great drove of cattle and has an overflowing
dairy. As we handed him the cheese he said, "I really believe this is of my
own making." "Fielding," I inquired, "how does your dairy thrive, and have
you any new stock on your farm? Come give us a little touch of the
country." He gave me a mischievous look and said, "I will not tell you a
word until you let me know all about that full-blooded cow, of which I have
heard something. You need not try to hide that story any longer." So we
yielded to his coaxing. It was about like this:
The man had not been able to pay his debts. The mortgage on the farm had
been foreclosed. Day of sale had come. The sheriff stood on a box reading
the terms of vendue. All payments to be made in six months. The auctioneer
took his place. The old man and his wife and the children all cried as the
piano, and the chairs, and the pictures, and the carpets, and the bedsteads
went at half their worth. When the piano went, it seemed to the old people
as if the sheriff were selling all the fingers that had ever played on it;
and when the carpets were struck off, I think father and mother thought of
the little feet that had tramped it; and when the bedstead was sold, it
brought to mind the bright, curly heads that had slept on it long before
the dark days had come, and father had put his name on the back of a note,
signing his own death warrant. The next thing to being buried alive is to
have the sheriff sell you out when you have been honest and have tried
always to do right. There are so many envious ones to chuckle at your fall,
and come in to buy your carriage, blessing the Lord that the time has come
for you to walk and for them to ride.
But to us the auction reached its climax of interest when we went to the
barn. We were spending our summers in the country, and must have a cow.
There were ten or fifteen sukies to be sold. There were reds, and piebalds,
and duns, and browns, and brindles, short horns, long horns, crumpled horns
and no horns. But we marked for our own a cow that was said to be
full-blooded, whether Alderney, or Durham, or Galloway, or Ayrshire, I will
not tell lest some cattle fancier feel insulted by what I say; and if there
is any grace that I pride myself on, it is prudence and a determination
always to say smooth things. "How much is bid for this magnificent,
full-blooded cow?" cried the auctioneer. "Seventy-five dollars," shouted
some one. I made it eighty. He made it ninety. Somebody else quickly made
it a hundred. After the bids had risen to one hundred and twenty-five
dollars, I got animated, and resolved that I would have that cow if it
took my last cent. "One hundred and forty dollars," shouted my opponent.
The auctioneer said it was the finest cow he had ever sold; and not knowing
much about vendues, of course I believed him. It was a good deal of money
for a minister to pay, but then I could get the whole matter off my hands
by giving "a note." In utter defiance of everything I cried out, "One
hundred and fifty dollars!" "Going at that," said the auctioneer. "Going at
that! once! twice! three times! gone! Mr. Talmage has it." It was one of
the proudest moments of our life. There she stood, tall, immense in the
girth, horns branching graceful as a tree branch, full-uddered,
silk-coated, pensive-eyed.
We hired two boys to drive her home while we rode in a carriage. No sooner
had we started than the cow showed what turned out to be one of her
peculiarities, great speed of hoof. She left the boys, outran my horse,
jumped the fence, frightened nearly to death a group of schoolchildren, and
by the time we got home we all felt as if we had all day been put on a
fox-chase.
We never had any peace with that cow. She knew more tricks than a juggler.
She could let down any bars, open any gate, outrun any dog and ruin the
patience of any minister. We had her a year, and yet she never got over
wanting to go to the vendue. Once started out of the yard, she was bound to
see the sheriff. We coaxed her with carrots, and apples, and cabbage, and
sweetest stalks, and the richest beverage of slops, but without avail.
As a milker she was a failure. "Mike," who lived just back of our place,
would come in at nights from his "Kerry cow," a scraggly runt that lived on
the commons, with his pail so full he had to carry it cautiously lest it
spill over. But after our full-blooded had been in clover to her eyes all
day, Bridget would go out to the barnyard, and tug and pull for a supply
enough to make two or three custards. I said, "Bridget, you don't know how
to milk. Let me try." I sat down by the cow, tried the full force of
dynamics, but just at the moment when my success was about to be
demonstrated, a sudden thought took her somewhere between the horns, and
she started for the vendue, with one stroke of her back foot upsetting the
small treasure I had accumulated, and leaving me a mere wreck of what I
once was.
She had, among other bad things, a morbid appetite. Notwithstanding we gave
her the richest herbaceous diet, she ate everything she could put her mouth
on. She was fond of horse blankets and articles of human clothing. I found
her one day at the clothes line, nearly choked to death, for she had
swallowed one leg of something and seemed dissatisfied that she could not
get down the other. The most perfect nuisance that I ever had about my
place was that full-blooded.
Having read in our agricultural journals of cows that were slaughtered
yielding fourteen hundred pounds neat weight, we concluded to sell her to
the butcher. We set a high price upon her and got it--that is, we took a
note for it, which is the same thing. My bargain with the butcher was the
only successful chapter in my bovine experiences. The only taking-off in
the whole transaction was that the butcher ran away, leaving me nothing but
a specimen of poor chirography, and I already had enough of that among my
manuscripts.
My friend, never depend on high-breeds. Some of the most useless of cattle
had ancestors spoken of in the "Commentaries of Caesar." That Alderney
whose grandfather used to graze on a lord's park in England may not be
worth the grass she eats.
Do not depend too much on the high-sounding name of Durham or Devon. As
with animals, so with men. Only one President ever had a President for a
son. Let every cow make her own name, and every man achieve his own
position. It is no great credit to a fool that he had a wise grandfather.
Many an Ayrshire and Hereford has had the hollow-horn and the foot-rot.
Both man and animal are valuable in proportion as they are useful. "Mike's"
cow beat my full-blooded.