I once saw a cow that had lost her cud. How forlorn and desolate and
sick at heart that cow looked! No more rumination, no more of that
second and finer mastication, no more of that sweet and juicy reverie
under the spreading trees, or in the stall. Then the farmer took an
elder and scraped the bark and put something with it, and made the cow a
cud, and, after due waiting, the experiment took, a response came back,
and the mysterious machinery was once more in motion, and the cow was
herself again.
Have you, O poet, or essayist, or story-writer, never lost your cud,
and wandered about days and weeks without being able to start a single
thought or an image that tasted good,--your literary appetite dull or
all gone, and the conviction daily growing that it was all over with you
in that direction? A little elder-bark, something fresh and bitter from
the woods, is about the best thing you can take.