The President had the knack of illustrating a false syllogism by a
story from the front. Soldiers stole a cow from a farmyard. It had but
the stump of a tail, and foreseeing that there might be a requisition
by the owner, who passed for a Union sympathizer, they disguised the
creature by attaching a long switch from a dead bovine. Sure enough the
man came to headquarters, and from his patriotic plea of having lost
much by adhering to the old cause, his demand was accorded. If he could
find his lost animal, he was entitled to it and the offenders would be
punished. It had not been obtained by the regular forage, that he
swore. Well, he was brought by the officer seeing him round to the pen
where the beeves were secured which the commissariat duly furnished.
Here the rival suppliers had stabled the creature, and she was lashing
off the flies with the substitute for the detached tail with supreme
felicity in the lost enjoyment. The farmer scanned her with more than a
merely suspicious eye, so that the lookers-on grew anxious, and the
sub-officer with him, and who thought of his own plate of beef,
hastened to say:
"Well, you don't see anything here anywheres like your beastie, do you,
old father?"
"I dunno. Thar suttinly is one cow the pictur' of mine--but my
Lilywhite was a stump--had a stub-tail, you know!"
"Hum!" said the corporal firmly, "but this here cow has a long
tail!--ain't it?"
"True--and mine were a stub--let us seek farther, officer!"
* * * * *