I wonder that Wilson Flagg did not include the cow among his
"Picturesque Animals," for that is where she belongs. She has not the
classic beauty of the horse, but in picture-making qualities she is far
ahead of him. Her shaggy, loose-jointed body; her irregular, sketchy
outlines, like those of the landscape,--the hollows and ridges, the
slopes and prominences; her tossing horns, her bushy tail, tier swinging
gait, her tranquil, ruminating habits,--all tend to make her an object
upon which the artist eye loves to dwell. The artists are forever
putting her into pictures, too. In rural landscape scenes she is
an important feature. Behold her grazing in the pastures and on the
hillsides, or along banks of streams, or ruminating under wide-spreading
trees, or standing belly-deep in the creek or pond, or lying upon the
smooth places in the quiet summer afternoon, the day's grazing done,
and waiting to be summoned home to be milked; and again in the twilight
lying upon the level summit of the hill, or where the sward is thickest
and softest; or in winter a herd of them filing along toward the spring
to drink, or being "foddered" from the stack in the field upon the new
snow,--surely the cow is a picturesque animal, and all her goings and
comings are pleasant to behold.
I looked into Hamerton's clever book on the domestic animals also,
expecting to find my divinity duly celebrated, but he passes her by and
contemplates the bovine qualities only as they appear in the ox and the
bull.
Neither have the poets made much of the cow, but have rather dwelt
upon the steer, or the ox yoked to the plow. I recall this touch from
Emerson:--
"The heifer that lows in the upland farm,
Far heard, lows not thine ear to charm."
But the ear is charmed, nevertheless, especially if it be not too near,
and the air be still and dense, or hollow, as the farmer says. And
again, if it be springtime and she task that powerful bellows of hers
to its utmost capacity, how round the sound is, and how far it goes over
the hills!
The cow has at least four tones or lows. First, there is her alarmed
or distressed low when deprived of her calf, or when separated from
her mates,--her low of affection. Then there is her call of hunger, a
petition for food, sometimes full of impatience, or her answer to the
farmer's call, full of eagerness. Then there is that peculiar frenzied
bawl she utters on smelling blood, which causes every member of the herd
to lift its head and hasten to the spot,--the native cry of the clan.
When she is gored or in great danger she bawls also, but that is
different. And lastly, there is the long, sonorous volley she lets off
on the hills or in the yard, or along the highway, and which seems to
be expressive of a kind of unrest and vague longing,--the longing of the
imprisoned Io for her lost identity. She sends her voice forth so that
every god on Mount Olympus can hear her plaint. She makes this sound in
the morning, especially in the spring, as she goes forth to graze.
One of our rural poets, Myron Benton, whose verse often has the flavor
of sweet cream, has written some lines called "Rumination," in which the
cow is the principal figure, and with which I am permitted to adorn my
theme. The poet first gives his attention to a little brook that "breaks
its shallow gossip" at his feet and "drowns the oriole's voice:"--
"But moveth not that wise and ancient cow,
Who chews her juicy cud so languid now
Beneath her favorite elm, whose drooping bough
Lulls all but inward vision fast asleep:
But still, her tireless tail a pendulum sweep
Mysterious clock-work guides, and some hid pulley
Her drowsy cud, each moment, raises duly.
"Of this great, wondrous world she has seen more
Than you, my little brook, and cropped its store
Of succulent grass on many a mead and lawn;
And strayed to distant uplands in the dawn.
And she has had some dark experience
Of graceless man's ingratitude; and hence
Her ways have not been ways of pleasantness,
Nor all her paths of peace. But her distress
And grief she has lived past; your giddy round
Disturbs her not, for she is learned profound
In deep brahminical philosophy.
She chews the cud of sweetest revery
Above your worldly prattle, brooklet merry,
Oblivious of all things sublunary."
The cow figures in Grecian mythology, and in the Oriental literature is
treated as a sacred animal. "The clouds are cows and the rain milk." I
remember what Herodotus says of the Egyptians' worship of heifers and
steers; and in the traditions of the Celtic nations the cow is regarded
as a divinity. In Norse mythology the milk of the cow Andhumbla afforded
nourishment to the Frost giants, and it was she that licked into being
and into shape a god, the father of Odin. If anything could lick a god
into shape, certainly the cow could do it. You may see her perform this
office for young Taurus any spring. She licks him out of the fogs and
bewilderments and uncertainties in which he finds himself on first
landing upon these shores, and up onto his feet in an incredibly short
time. Indeed, that potent tongue of hers can almost make the dead alive
any day, and the creative lick of the old Scandinavian mother cow is
only a large-lettered rendering of the commonest facts.
The horse belongs to the fiery god Mars. He favors war, and is one of
its oldest, most available, and most formidable engines. The steed is
clothed with thunder, and smells the battle from afar; but the cattle
upon a thousand hills denote that peace and plenty bear sway in the
land. The neighing of the horse is a call to battle; but the lowing of
old Brockleface in the valley brings the golden age again. The savage
tribes are never without the horse; the Scythians are all mounted; but
the cow would tame and humanize them. When the Indians will cultivate
the cow, I shall think their civilization fairly begun. Recently, when
the horses were sick with the epizooetic, and the oxen came to the city
and helped to do their work, what an Arcadian air again filled the
streets! But the dear old oxen,--how awkward and distressed they looked!
Juno wept in the face of every one of them. The horse is a true citizen,
and is entirely at home in the paved streets; but the ox,--what a
complete embodiment of all rustic and rural things! Slow, deliberate,
thick-skinned, powerful, hulky, ruminating, fragrant-breathed, when he
came to town the spirit and suggestion of all Georgics and Bucolics came
with him. O citizen, was it only a plodding, unsightly brute that went
by? Was there no chord in your bosom, long silent, that sweetly vibrated
at the sight of that patient, Herculean couple? Did you smell no hay or
cropped herbage, see no summer pastures with circles of cool shade, hear
no voice of herds among the hills? They were very likely the only horses
your grandfather ever had. Not much trouble to harness and unharness
them. Not much vanity on the road in those days. They did all the work
on the early pioneer farm. They were the gods whose rude strength first
broke the soil. They could live where the moose and the deer could. If
there was no clover or timothy to be had, then the twigs of the basswood
and birch would do. Before there were yet fields given up to grass, they
found ample pasturage in the woods. Their wide-spreading horns gleamed
in the duskiness, and their paths and the paths of the cows became the
future roads and highways, or even the streets of great cities.
All the descendants of Odin show a bovine trace, and cherish and
cultivate the cow. In Norway she is a great feature. Professor Boyesen
describes what he calls the _saeter_, the spring migration of the dairy
and dairymaids, with all the appurtenances of butter and cheese making,
from the valleys to the distant plains upon the mountains, where the
grass keeps fresh and tender till fall. It is the great event of the
year in all the rural districts. Nearly the whole family go with the
cattle and remain with them. At evening the cows are summoned home with
a long horn, called the _loor,_ in the hands of the milkmaid. The
whole herd comes winding down the mountain-side toward the _saeter_ in
obedience to the mellow blast.
What were those old Vikings but thick-hided bulls that delighted
in nothing so much as goring each other? And has not the charge of
beefiness been brought much nearer home to us than that? But about all
the northern races there is something that is kindred to cattle in the
best sense,--something in their art and literature that is essentially
pastoral, sweet-breathed, continent, dispassionate, ruminating,
wide-eyed, soft-voiced,--a charm of kine, the virtue of brutes.
The cow belongs more especially to the northern peoples, to the region
of the good, green grass. She is the true _grazing_ animal. That broad,
smooth, always dewy nose of hers is just the suggestion of greensward.
She caresses the grass; she sweeps off the ends of the leaves; she reaps
it with the soft sickle of her tongue. She crops close, but she does
not bruise or devour the turf like the horse. She is the sward's best
friend, and will make it thick and smooth as a carpet.
"The turfy mountains where live the nibbling sheep"
are not for her. Her muzzle is too blunt; then she does not _bite_ as do
the sheep; she has no upper teeth; she _crops._ But on the lower slopes,
and margins, and rich bottoms, she is at home. Where the daisy and the
buttercup and clover bloom, and where corn will grow, is her proper
domain. The agriculture of no country can long thrive without her. Not
only a large part of the real, but much of the potential, wealth of the
land is wrapped up in her.
Then the cow has given us some good words and hints. How could we get
along without the parable of the cow that gave a good pail of milk and
then kicked it over? One could hardly keep house without it. Or the
parable of the cream and the skimmed milk, or of the buttered bread? We
know, too, through her aid, what the horns of the dilemma mean, and what
comfort there is in the juicy cud of reverie.
I have said the cow has not been of much service to the poets, and yet
I remember that Jean Ingelow could hardly have managed her "High Tide"
without "Whitefoot" and "Lightfoot" and "Cusha! Cusha! Cusha! calling;"
or Trowbridge his "Evening at the Farm," in which the real call of the
American farm-boy of "Co', boss! Co', boss! Co', Co'," makes a very
musical refrain.
Tennyson's charming "Milking Song" is another flower of poesy that has
sprung up in my divinity's footsteps.
What a variety of individualities a herd of cows presents when you have
come to know them all, not only in form and color, but in manners and
disposition! Some are timid and awkward, and the butt of the whole
herd. Some remind you of deer. Some have an expression in the face
like certain persons you have known. A petted and well-fed cow has a
benevolent and gracious look; an ill-used and poorly fed one, a pitiful
and forlorn look. Some cows have a masculine or ox expression; others
are extremely feminine. The latter are the ones for milk. Some cows
will kick like a horse; some jump fences like deer. Every herd has its
ringleader, its unruly spirit,--one that plans all the mischief, and
leads the rest through the fences into the grain or into the orchard.
This one is usually quite different from the master spirit, the "boss of
the yard." The latter is generally the most peaceful and law-abiding cow
in the lot, and the least bullying and quarrelsome. But she is not to be
trifled with; her will is law; the whole herd give way before her, those
that have crossed horns with her and those that have not, but yielded
their allegiance without crossing. I remember such a one among my
father's milkers when I was a boy,--a slender-horned, deep-shouldered,
large-uddered, dewlapped old cow that we always put first in the long
stable, so she could not have a cow on each side of her to forage upon;
for the master is yielded to no less in the stanchions than in the
yard. She always had the first place anywhere. She had her choice of
standing-room in the milking-yard, and when she wanted to lie down there
or in the fields the best and softest spot was hers. When the herd were
foddered from the stack or barn, or fed with pumpkins in the fall, she
was always first served. Her demeanor was quiet but impressive. She
never bullied or gored her mates, but literally ruled them with the
breath of her nostrils. If any new-comer or ambitious younger cow,
however, chafed under her supremacy, she was ever ready to make good her
claims. And with what spirit she would fight when openly challenged!
She was a whirlwind of pluck and valor; and not after one defeat or two
defeats would she yield the championship. The boss cow, when overcome,
seems to brood over her disgrace, and day after day will meet her rival
in fierce combat.
A friend of mine, a pastoral philosopher, whom I have consulted in
regard to the master cow, thinks it is seldom the case that one rules
all the herd, if it number many, but that there is often one that will
rule nearly all. "Curiously enough," he says, "a case like this will
often occur: No. 1 will whip No. 2; No. 2 whips No. 3; and No. 3 whips
No. 1; so around in a circle. This is not a mistake; it is often the
case. I remember," he continued, "we once had feeding out of a large
bin in the centre of the yard six cows who mastered right through in
succession from No. 1 to No. 6; _but_ No. 6 _paid off the score by
whipping No. 1._ I often watched them when they were all trying to feed
out of the box, and of course trying, dog-in-the-manger fashion, each to
prevent any other she could. They would often get in the order to do it
very systematically, since they could keep rotating about the box
till the chain happened to get broken somewhere, when there would be
confusion. Their mastership, you know, like that between nations, is
constantly changing. There are always Napoleons who hold their own
through many vicissitudes; but the ordinary cow is continually liable to
lose her foothold. Some cow she has always despised, and has often sent
tossing across the yard at her horns' ends, some pleasant morning will
return the compliment and pay off old scores."
But my own observation has been that, in herds in which there have
been no important changes for several years, the question of might gets
pretty well settled, and some one cow becomes the acknowledged ruler.
The bully of the yard is never the master, but usually a second or third
rate pusher that never loses an opportunity to hook those beneath her,
or to gore the masters if she can get them in a tight place. If such a
one can get loose in the stable, she is quite certain to do mischief.
She delights to pause in the open bars and turn and keep those behind
her at bay till she sees a pair of threatening horns pressing toward
her, when she quickly passes on. As one cow masters all, so there is one
cow that is mastered by all. These are the two extremes of the herd, the
head and the tail. Between them are all grades of authority, with none
so poor but hath some poorer to do her reverence.
The cow has evidently come down to us from a wild or semi-wild state;
perhaps is a descendant of those wild, shaggy cattle of which a small
band is still preserved in some nobleman's park in Scotland. Cuvier
seems to have been of this opinion. One of the ways in which her wild
instincts still crop out is the disposition she shows in spring to hide
her calf,--a common practice among the wild herds. Her wild nature would
be likely to come to the surface at this crisis if ever; and I have
known cows that practiced great secrecy in dropping their calves. As
their time approached, they grew restless, a wild and excited look was
upon them; and if left free, they generally set out for the woods, or
for some other secluded spot. After the calf is several hours old,
and has got upon its feet and had its first meal, the dam by some sign
commands it to lie down and remain quiet while she goes forth to feed.
If the calf is approached at such time, it plays "possum," pretends
to be dead or asleep, till, on finding this ruse does not succeed, it
mounts to its feet, bleats loudly and fiercely, and charges desperately
upon the intruder. But it recovers from this wild scare in a little
while, and never shows signs of it again.
The habit of the cow, also, in eating the placenta, looks to me like a
vestige of her former wild instincts,--the instinct to remove everything
that would give the wild beasts a clew or a scent, and so attract them
to her helpless young.
How wise and sagacious the cows become that run upon the street, or pick
their living along the highway! The mystery of gates and bars is at last
solved to them. They ponder over them by night, they lurk about them by
day, till they acquire a new sense,--till they become _en rapport_ with
them and know when they are open and unguarded. The garden gate, if it
open into the highway at any point, is never out of the mind of these
roadsters, or out of their calculations. They calculate upon the chances
of its being left open a certain number of times in the season; and if
it be but once, and only for five minutes, your cabbage and sweet corn
suffer. What villager, or countryman either, has not been awakened at
night by the squeaking and crunching of those piratical jaws under the
window, or in the direction of the vegetable patch? I have had the cows,
after they had eaten up my garden, break into the stable where my own
milcher was tied, and gore her and devour her meal. Yes, life presents
but one absorbing problem to the street cow, and that is how to get into
your garden. She catches glimpses of it over the fence or through the
pickets, and her imagination or her epigastrium is inflamed. When
the spot is surrounded by a high board fence, I think I have seen her
peeping at the cabbages through a knothole. At last she learns to open
the gate. It is a great triumph of bovine wit. She does it with her horn
or her nose, or may be with her ever-ready tongue. I doubt if she has
ever yet penetrated the mystery of the newer patent fastenings; but the
old-fashioned thumb-latch she can see through, give her time enough.
A large, lank, muley or polled cow used to annoy me in this way when I
was a dweller in a certain pastoral city. I more than half suspected she
was turned in by some one; so one day I watched. Presently I heard the
gate-latch rattle; the gate swung open, and in walked the old buffalo.
On seeing me she turned and ran like a horse. I then fastened the gate
on the inside and watched again. After long waiting the old cow came
quickly round the corner and approached the gate. She lifted the latch
with her nose. Then, as the gate did not move, she lifted it again and
again. Then she gently nudged it. Then, the obtuse gate not taking
the hint, she butted it gently, then harder and still harder, till it
rattled again. At this juncture I emerged from my hiding-place, when
the old villain scampered off with great precipitation. She knew she
was trespassing, and she had learned that there were usually some swift
penalties attached to this pastime.
I have owned but three cows and loved but one. That was the first one,
Chloe, a bright red, curly-pated, golden-skinned Devonshire cow, that an
ocean steamer landed for me upon the banks of the Potomac one bright May
Day many clover summers ago. She came from the north, from the pastoral
regions of the Catskills, to graze upon the broad commons of the
national capital. I was then the fortunate and happy lessee of an old
place with an acre of ground attached, almost within the shadow of the
dome of the Capitol. Behind a high but aged and decrepit board fence I
indulged my rural and unclerical tastes. I could look up from my homely
tasks and cast a potato almost in the midst of that cataract of marble
steps that flows out of the north wing of the patriotic pile. Ah! when
that creaking and sagging back gate closed behind me in the evening, I
was happy; and when it opened for my egress thence in the morning, I was
not happy. Inside that gate was a miniature farm, redolent of homely,
primitive life, a tumble-down house and stables and implements of
agriculture and horticulture, broods of chickens, and growing pumpkins,
and a thousand antidotes to the weariness of an artificial life.
Outside of it were the marble and iron palaces, the paved and blistering
streets, and the high, vacant mahogany desk of a government clerk.
In that ancient inclosure I took an earth bath twice a day. I planted
myself as deep in the soil as I could, to restore the normal tone and
freshness of my system, impaired by the above-mentioned government
mahogany. I have found there is nothing like the earth to draw the
various social distempers out of one. The blue devils take flight at
once if they see you mean to bury them and make compost of them. Emerson
intimates that the scholar had better not try to have two gardens; but
I could never spend an hour hoeing up dock and red-root and twitch-grass
without in some way getting rid of many weeds and fungi, unwholesome
growths, that a petty indoor life is forever fostering in my moral and
intellectual nature.
But the finishing touch was not given till Chloe came. She was the jewel
for which this homely setting waited. My agriculture had some object
then. The old gate never opened with such alacrity as when she paused
before it. How we waited for her coming! Should I send Drewer, the
colored patriarch, for her? No; the master of the house himself should
receive Juno at the capital.
"One cask for you," said the clerk, referring to the steamer bill of
lading.
"Then I hope it's a cask of milk," I said. "I expected a cow."
"One cask, it says here."
"Well, let's see it; I'll warrant it has horns and is tied by a rope;"
which proved to be the case, for there stood the only object that bore
my name, chewing its cud, on the forward deck. How she liked the voyage
I could not find out; but she seemed to relish so much the feeling of
solid ground beneath her feet once more, that she led me a lively step
all the way home. She cut capers in front of the White House, and tried
twice to wind me up in the rope as we passed the Treasury. She kicked up
her heels on the broad avenue, and became very coltish as she came under
the walls of the Capitol. But that night the long-vacant stall in the
old stable was filled, and the next morning the coffee had met with a
change of heart. I had to go out twice with the lantern and survey my
treasure before I went to bed. Did she not come from the delectable
mountains, and did I not have a sort of filial regard for her as toward
my foster-mother?
This was during the Arcadian age at the capital, before the easy-going
Southern ways had gone out and the prim new Northern ways had come
in, and when the domestic animals were treated with distinguished
consideration and granted the freedom of the city. There was a charm of
cattle in the street and upon the commons; goats cropped your rosebushes
through the pickets, and nooned upon your front porch; and pigs dreamed
Arcadian dreams under your garden fence, or languidly frescoed it with
pigments from the nearest pool. It was a time of peace; it was the poor
man's golden age. Your cow, your goat, your pig, led vagrant, wandering
lives, and picked up a subsistence wherever they could, like the bees,
which was almost everywhere. Your cow went forth in the morning and came
home fraught with milk at night, and you never troubled yourself where
she went or how far she roamed.
Chloe took very naturally to this kind of life. At first I had to go
with her a few times and pilot her to the nearest commons, and then I
left her to her own wit, which never failed her. What adventures she
had, what acquaintances she made, how far she wandered, I never knew.
I never came across her in my walks or rambles. Indeed, on several
occasions I thought I would look her up and see her feeding in national
pastures, but I never could find her. There were plenty of cows, but
they were all strangers. But punctually, between four and five o'clock
in the afternoon, her white horns would be seen tossing above the gate
and her impatient low be heard. Sometimes, when I turned her forth in
the morning, she would pause and apparently consider which way she would
go. Should she go toward Kendall Green to-day, or follow the Tiber,
or over by the Big Spring, or out around Lincoln Hospital? She seldom
reached a conclusion till she had stretched forth her neck and blown a
blast on her trumpet that awoke the echoes in the very lantern on the
dome of the Capitol. Then, after one or two licks, she would disappear
around the corner. Later in the season, when the grass was parched or
poor on the commons, and the corn and cabbage tempting in the garden,
Chloe was loath to depart in the morning, and her deliberations were
longer than ever, and very often I had to aid her in coming to a
decision.
For two summers she was a wellspring of pleasure and profit in my farm
of one acre, when, in an evil moment, I resolved to part with her and
try another. In an evil moment I say, for from that time my luck in
cattle left me. The goddess never forgave me the execution of that rash
and cruel resolve.
The day is indelibly stamped on my memory when I exposed my Chloe for
sale in the public market-place. It was in November, a bright, dreamy,
Indian summer day. A sadness oppressed me, not unmixed with guilt and
remorse. An old Irish woman came to the market also with her pets to
sell, a sow and five pigs, and took up a position next me. We condoled
with each other; we bewailed the fate of our darlings together; we
berated in chorus the white-aproned but blood-stained fraternity who
prowled about us. When she went away for a moment I minded the pigs, and
when I strolled about she minded my cow. How shy the innocent beast was
of those carnal marketmen! How she would shrink away from them! When
they put out a hand to feel her condition she would "scrooch" down her
back, or bend this way or that, as if the hand were a branding-iron. So
long as I stood by her head she felt safe--deluded creature!--and chewed
the cud of sweet content; but the moment I left her side she seemed
filled with apprehension, and followed me with her eyes, lowing softly
and entreatingly till I returned.
At last the money was counted out for her, and her rope surrendered to
the hand of another. How that last look of alarm and incredulity, which
I caught as I turned for a parting glance, went to my heart!
Her stall was soon filled, or partly filled, and this time with a
native,--a specimen of what may be called the cornstalk breed of
Virginia; a slender, furtive, long-geared heifer just verging on
cowhood, that in spite of my best efforts would wear a pinched and
hungry look. She evidently inherited a humped back. It was a family
trait, and evidence of the purity of her blood. For the native blooded
cow of Virginia, from shivering over half rations of cornstalks in the
open air during those bleak and windy winters, and roaming over those
parched fields in summer, has come to have some marked features. For
one thing, her pedal extremities seem lengthened; for another, her
udder does not impede her traveling; for a third, her backbone inclines
strongly to the curve; then, she despiseth hay. This last is a sure
test. Offer a thorough-bred Virginia cow hay, and she will laugh in
your face; but rattle the husks or shucks, and she knows you to be her
friend.
The new-comer even declined corn-meal at first. She eyed it furtively,
then sniffed it suspiciously, but finally discovered that it bore some
relation to her native "shucks," when she fell to eagerly.
I cherish the memory of this cow, however, as the most affectionate
brute I ever knew. Being deprived of her calf, she transferred her
affections to her master, and would fain have made a calf of him, lowing
in the most piteous and inconsolable manner when he was out of her
sight, hardly forgetting her grief long enough to eat her meal, and
entirely neglecting her beloved husks. Often in the middle of the night
she would set up that sonorous lamentation, and continue it till sleep
was chased from every eye in the household. This generally had the
effect of bringing the object of her affection before her, but in a mood
anything but filial or comforting. Still, at such times a kick seemed
a comfort to her, and she would gladly have kissed the rod that was the
instrument of my midnight wrath.
But her tender star was destined soon to a fatal eclipse. Being tied
with too long a rope on one occasion during my temporary absence, she
got her head into the meal-barrel, and stopped not till she had devoured
nearly half a bushel of dry meal. The singularly placid and benevolent
look that beamed from the meal-besmeared face when I discovered her was
something to be remembered. For the first time, also, her spinal column
came near assuming a horizontal line. But the grist proved too much
for her frail mill, and her demise took place on the third day, not of
course without some attempt to relieve her on my part. I gave her, as is
usual in such emergencies, everything I "could think of," and everything
my neighbors could think of, besides some fearful prescriptions which I
obtained from a German veterinary surgeon, but to no purpose. I imagined
her poor maw distended and inflamed with the baking sodden mass which no
physic could penetrate or enliven.
Thus ended my second venture in live-stock. My third, which followed
sharp upon the heels of this disaster, was scarcely more of a success.
This time I led to the altar a buffalo cow, as they call the "muley"
down South,--a large, spotted, creamy-skinned cow, with a fine udder,
that I persuaded a Jew drover to part with for ninety dollars. "Pag like
a dish rack (rag)," said he, pointing to her udder after she had been
milked. "You vill come pack and gif me the udder ten tollar" (for he
had demanded an even hundred), he continued, "after you have had her a
gouple of days." True, I felt like returning to him after a "gouple of
days," but not to pay the other ten dollars. The cow proved to be as
blind as a bat, though capable of counterfeiting the act of seeing to
perfection. For did she not lift up her head and follow with her eyes a
dog that scaled the fence and ran through the other end of the lot,
and the next moment dash my hopes thus raised by trying to walk over
a locust-tree thirty feet high? And when I set the bucket before her
containing her first mess of meal, she missed it by several inches, and
her nose brought up against the ground. Was it a kind of far-sightedness
and near blindness? That was it, I think; she had genius, but not
talent; she could see the man in the moon, but was quite oblivious to
the man immediately in her front. Her eyes were telescopic and required
a long range.
As long as I kept her in the stall, or confined to the inclosure, this
strange eclipse of her sight was of little consequence. But when spring
came, and it was time for her to go forth and seek her livelihood in the
city's waste places, I was embarrassed. Into what remote corners or into
what _terra incognita_ might she not wander! There was little doubt but
that she would drift around home in the course of the summer, or perhaps
as often as every week or two; but could she be trusted to find her way
back every night? Perhaps she could be taught. Perhaps her other senses
were acute enough to compensate in a measure for her defective vision.
So I gave her lessons in the topography of the country. I led her forth
to graze for a few hours each day and led her home again. Then I left
her to come home alone, which feat she accomplished very encouragingly.
She came feeling her way along, stepping very high, but apparently a
most diligent and interested sight-seer. But she was not sure of the
right house when she got to it, though she stared at it very hard.
Again I turned her forth, and again she came back, her telescopic eyes
apparently of some service to her. On the third day, there was a fierce
thunder-storm late in the afternoon, and old buffalo did not come home.
It had evidently scattered and bewildered what little wits she had.
Being barely able to navigate those streets on a calm day, what could
she be expected to do in a tempest?
After the storm had passed, and near sundown, I set out in quest of
her, but could get no clew. I heard that two cows had been struck by
lightning about a mile out on the commons. My conscience instantly told
me that one of them was mine. It would be a fit closing of the third act
of this pastoral drama. Thitherward I bent my steps, and there upon the
smooth plain I beheld the scorched and swollen forms of two cows slain
by thunderbolts, but neither of them had ever been mine.
The next day I continued the search, and the next, and the next. Finally
I hoisted an umbrella over my head, for the weather had become hot, and
set out deliberately and systematically to explore every foot of open
common on Capitol Hill. I tramped many miles, and found every man's cow
but my own,--some twelve or fifteen hundred, I should think. I saw many
vagrant boys and Irish and colored women, nearly all of whom had seen a
buffalo cow that very day that answered exactly to my description, but
in such diverse and widely separate places that I knew it was no cow of
mine. And it was astonishing how many times I was myself deceived; how
many rumps or heads, or line backs or white flanks, I saw peeping over
knolls, or from behind fences or other objects, that could belong to no
cow but mine!
Finally I gave up the search, concluded the cow had been stolen, and
advertised her, offering a reward. But days passed, and no tidings were
obtained. Hope began to burn pretty low,--was indeed on the point of
going out altogether,--when one afternoon, as I was strolling over the
commons (for in my walks I still hovered about the scenes of my lost
milcher), I saw the rump of a cow, over a grassy knoll, that looked
familiar. Coming nearer, the beast lifted up her head; and, behold! it
was she! only a few squares from home, where doubtless she had been most
of the time. I had overshot the mark in my search. I had ransacked the
far-off, and had neglected the near-at-hand, as we are so apt to do. But
she was ruined as a milcher, and her history thenceforward was brief and
touching!