“----Secum meditari ingenium est _boûm_.”
_Virgil._
“Cows, of all animals, have the greatest propensity for
rumination. For the most part, they are gentle, quiet,
affectionate, unpretending, useful animals; all they require
is kindness, and kindness they will return. Yet they have
their antipathies and their whims, (red shawls are their
abomination,) but, on the whole, they are inoffensive
ruminators--not obtrusive, (except when they take a fancy
to _gore_.) Their caresses are rough as their tongues; yet
their roughest _licks_ are meant in kindness. They never
bite--their teeth are ground down. They are neither snappish
nor carnivorous. They are remarkably fond of salt, and are
quick to detect its presence. Although timid and yielding in
general, they will fight any one, or any thing, in defense
of their young.”
_Baron Munchausen._
The last quoted author has described with remarkable correctness, in
his remarks upon the cow, the character of a being, of whose existence
he could not have dreamed--even of myself. Yes, even such I conceive
to be my character--the coat fits, and I will put it on--“under such
a shape I write.” Being in external appearance, a hale, stout, fat
old bachelor of fifty, fond of the arm-chair and the comfortable
dressing-gown, of easy fortune, retired habits, and few friends,
I am, in soul, thought and disposition, and to all intents and
purposes, _a gentle old cow_. Nor is there any thing humiliating in
the confession. I esteem the character--I admire it. Would to heaven
that in these _matter-of-fact, dollar-and-cent_ days, there were more
men of my nature! I injure no man; but if any man injures me, I have
horns and can gore him, a tail and can lash him. In consideration
of the unsullied purity of my character in my manly state, I have
ventured to conceive that I am, in the bovine genus, that most amiable
non-descript, an old maid. Still, I am no Io--nor Io turned old
maid. I never was handsome enough to warm the soul of Jove, nor mad
enough to swim the Bosphorus. I am not, never was, and never will be,
Oestrus-driven. The many-eyed shepherd, Argus, if ordered to watch
_me_, would have needed only one of his hundred eyes--he might have
seen me, even with “half an eye,” quietly grazing, all the morning
of my life, in the flowery meads of Literature, Moral Philosophy and
Metaphysics--ever and anon, quenching my thirst with a draft from the
pure stream of Helicon--and now, in the afternoon of life, reclined
upon the grass, under the shade of a branching, verdant oak, placidly,
philosophically, philanthropically, and withal meekly chewing the stock
which I formerly stored.
----“Lacte alimentum cognoscimus.”
Were it not presumptuous, I would hope that my production might prove
the pure, unadulterated, untainted “milk of human kindness.”