Part 28
That is something like it, but not exactly. I am afraid it is not possible to express with type the discontent, impatience, and disgust with life that the red calf gets into her bawling. Still, if you went out behind the barn and practised for a while, you might be able to make sounds that would give you an idea of what I mean. Her bawl begins in a tone of savage impatience and ends with a grumble of bitter pessimism. She seems to be saying:
"Where is that skim milk? If you can't let me have anything better, you might at least let me have that on time."
"Blaa-aa-aa-aa-umph!"
I suppose all calves are more or less alike, but this one has certainly had much to sour her on life. Since the day of her birth she has been an Ishmaelite. Even her own mother has been against her. And that brings me to a piece of proverbial wisdom that I haven't seen quoted in the reports of the Dairyman's Association. There is a Gaelic proverb which most people will find about as hard to pronounce as the bawling of the calf:
"Gu dheamhar a gabhais bo ri a laoig na ha gul aiche do ar gamhain."
For the benefit of Gaelic scholars who may read this, I wish to explain that my Gaelic is a mixture of Argyllshire and Inverness, with a touch of bad spelling added. The interpretation of this proverb is:
"How can a cow take to her calf when she is still in love with her yearling?"
Well, that was exactly the state of affairs that met the red calf when she came into the world. Her mother was still in love with the yearling that had been allowed to run with her in the pasture on the previous summer. She had no welcome for the newcomer; in fact, she never looked at it from the hour when it was born, and to this day the unnatural mother has to be kept away with a club when her neglected offspring is being fed. If the poor little thing gets an apple and tries to eat it, her own mother is the first to bunt her aside and take it away from her. At the same time that cow goes frantic if her yearling gets out of her sight. They are seldom a rod apart in the pasture field, and they invariably get into mischief together. I use the same club on both of them when they find a gate open and get into the orchard.
About the only creature on the farm that pays any attention to the calf is Sheppy, the collie dog. He stands in front of her by the hour, growling and barking, while she keeps her little sprouts of horns towards him and goes on feeding. I wish I could understand dog language well enough to know what Sheppy is saying to her, for he seems to be dreadfully in earnest, even though he never ventures near enough to give her a nip. As a matter of fact, Sheppy is cow-shy, and it is all due to the capable mother of this calf. When he was in the puppy stage, and beginning bravely to learn his work in the world, she reached him with a swinging kick that knocked him heels over head across the barn yard, and took all the spunk out of him as far as cows are concerned. He will drive a horse or pigs, and the turkey-gobblers have no terrors for him, but I can't make him go after the cows. She taught him a lesson that he hasn't forgotten. Possibly that is why he snarls so much at her calf. If he knew how to quote Shelley, he would probably be saying:
"Loathed image of thy mother, Thy milky meek face makes me sick with hate."
In spite of all this bluster, Sheppy is thoroughly afraid of the calf. One day, when I was watching them, the calf coughed unexpectedly, and Sheppy fell over backwards in his hurry to get out of the way. He evidently thought that she was going to bite him. She knows that he is afraid of her, for after she has listened to all the barking she thinks she can stand, she shakes her head at him, and he makes off instantly with his tail between his legs.
I sometimes wonder if our scientists have observed the calf as carefully as they should. Every one who has fed calves knows their tendency to bunt unexpectedly when feeding. They do the same when feeding from the cow, and it is just possible that there is light and leading in this fact for our inventors of milking machines. It is well known that incubators were a failure until some one noticed that sitting hens always turn their eggs at regular intervals. This hint led him to turn the eggs in the incubator in the same way as the hen does, and from that hour dates the success of artificial incubation. Perhaps, if some one would invent a milking machine that would bunt the cow at regular intervals, it would be a complete success. It is worth thinking about. Possibly, also, if we studied calves a little, the job of feeding them would not be so trying on the temper and damaging to our clothes. I have noticed that, when it is feeding, a calf always wiggles its tail, and it has occurred to me that there may be some connection between this and its bunting. Mark Twain once showed that a donkey couldn't bray if it couldn't lift its tail at the same time. He tied a brick to the tail of one that was serenading him, and it stopped at once. Perhaps if one tied a brick to a calf's tail, it wouldn't bunt over the pail when learning to feed by itself. The co-ordination of actions is one of the mysteries of nature. Some one who has a young calf might try it and report the result. The calf I have under observation is too far advanced to be experimented on in this way. It is passing from the milk stage, and now has a preference for harness straps, and it seems to positively relish a yard or two of night-shirt when it can get near the clothes-line.
The lonesome calf has convinced me that there is something in the law of heredity. Its mother is probably about as impudent a piece of cow-flesh as ever was allowed to live. She was raised as a pet, and human beings have no terrors for her. Nothing ever proved more clearly than she does that familiarity breeds contempt. I could safely defy any one to carry a pail across a field that she is in without having her get her nose in it. If a gate or door shows a crack an inch wide, she will work it open, and, followed by her darling yearling, will proceed to get into mischief. If she happens to be in the lane when some one comes along in a buggy, she will stand right in the middle of the path and stare in the most unmannerly way. It is useless to yell at her. The only thing to do is to get out and use the buggy whip on her and her yearling. Now, I have noticed that the calf is developing along the same lines. Every day I have to push it out of my way, and it has the same investigating spirit. It pokes its way into everything, and then looks surprised and hurt when it is reproved. Sometimes it is hurt, too, for some people inherit hasty tempers. But the point I want to make is that the calf has really inherited its exasperating ways. It hasn't learned them from its mother, because they are seldom or never together. They are bred in its bones. I hope that her good qualities, as the producer of a liberal supply of milk, rich in butter-fat, are also inherited. If they are, I shall forgive much. Anyway, I have learned that heredity is a real thing, and if I ever go in for a herd of cows, I shall take care to get a few that will have all the good qualities that a cow should have, in the firm belief that their offspring will inherit their virtues. It seems to me it should be just as easy to have good cows as poor ones, if one started right.
A couple of weeks ago, the red cow and her yearling got on the road and started off to see the world. Of course, it was the wettest day of the season, but that didn't matter. I had to hitch up and hunt for them. It was then I realised for the first time how complex is our system of roads. Within a radius of two miles, there were no less than eighteen turns they might have taken. If they went further than that, the roads that might invite them were almost beyond computation. I hadn't the faintest hint of the direction they had taken, and the search was bewildering. I splashed through the rain around a couple of blocks, stopping at every farmhouse that was near the road to ask if any one had been pestered by a red cow and a yearling that were cheeky enough to go on the front lawn without wiping their feet, and that wouldn't hesitate to help themselves from the swill-barrel. No one had seen them. I also questioned every one who was fool enough to be out on the road in such weather, but could get no trace of them. At last, when I was about to give up in despair, and was thinking of advertising in the "Lost, Strayed, or Stolen" column of the local paper, I remembered that on the previous night I had dreamed of an old schoolmate who was living a couple of miles away. Possibly that was an omen. Anyway, I couldn't think of anything better to do, so I headed in that direction. Sure enough, I found the cow and her yearling. She was in the field, and the yearling on the road. How she got into the field I cannot imagine, for it was well fenced, and I had to let the fence down to the last rail before I could get her out. She probably found some spot where she poked through with her usual impudence. Of course, I don't want to put myself on record as believing that the dream had anything to do with my finding the cow. All I want to point out is that when a cow has gone astray, a dream is just as likely to lead you to her as anything else. But I am not going to act as if I had found an infallible method of finding a stray cow. No, indeed. Instead of doing that, I have fixed the fence where she got out.
When I got home in the rain with the stray cows, the lonesome calf was standing humped up under the drip of the granary. "Blaa-aa-aa-umph!"
A BALLADE OF NUTTING
Whenas October putteth on Her bravery of green and gold And far horizons dimly don A purple veil of filmy fold, When days are warm and nights are cold-- Dawn hath a frosted coronal-- Then I betake me, as of old, To nut-trees--hickory, ches-, and wal-.
The song birds gather and are gone To where the year is summer-souled. The squirrels scamper in the sun, The blue jays in the orchard scold. The quail are whistling in the wold (Rare word, that fits a madrigal), While forth we go, with spirits bold, To nut-trees--hickory, ches-, and wal-.
Time was when I as climber shone, But younger legs must now take hold, And younger shins be barked upon The shell-bark, grievous to be tholed. (These fruits drupaceous, I am told, In proteid value are not small.) But now my gay ballade is trolled To nut-trees--hickory, ches-, and wal-.
ENVOI
Prince, if you have ever lolled In autumn days, or ever shall, You'll swell the praise that here is doled To nut-trees--hickory, ches-, and wal-.
NOVEMBER
_Nov. 1._--The gentle rain that Portia commended so highly as dropping from heaven did not blow up with an east wind. B-r-r-r! Ever since, and probably before, it blasted the ears of corn in Pharaoh's dream the east wind has been spreading desolation. At this time of the year it carries the coldest, wettest brand of rain known to suffering humanity, and can make it beat on the inside of an umbrella as readily as on the outside. In fact carrying an umbrella when an east wind is blowing is simply a form of exercise. A bedraggled man with an umbrella that had been turned inside out told me, in a peevish tone of voice, that the east rain we have been having had drenched every part of his anatomy except under his porous plaster, and it had lifted a corner of that. The storm that is now raging--no, I mean whining, for the east wind is altogether too ornery and mean-spirited to rage--has put the world out of joint, and what it has done to the roads "would not be good to hear." Nevertheless I met a cheerful soul who had a good word to say for it. He has a windmill and he assured me that an east wind is the most dependable of all when one wants to grind chop-feed. It blows more steadily than any other wind. Oh, yes, it is steady all right. It usually blows for three days at a stretch, and when it is done a man has become so sour on life that he hates his best friends. Even though I respect my informant, I refuse to give the east wind credit for good intentions in the matter. It can't understand the use of windmills. It must think that when it gets them creaking and clacking it is doing mischief.
The creatures of the barn yard contend with the storm in different ways. When the cattle and horses are driven out to be watered they turn their backs to the pelting wind and rain and drift to the nearest shelter. The turkeys, on the contrary, stand and face the storm with their heads huddled down on their breasts at the point where the carver inserts the fork. The turkey, by the way, is the true weathercock. When roosting in the open he invariably faces the wind. The reason for this is plain. The wind blowing on his breast packs his feathers down closer and so makes their protection complete. If it were allowed to strike in the opposite direction it would ruffle up the feathers and leave the bird practically naked to the elements. As for the chickens--well, if there is anything in nature more disconsolate-looking than a wet hen the tragedy of its existence has never been adequately described. The hogs are the weather prophets of the barn yard, and those that are not penned up began to burrow into the strawstacks even before the newspapers reported the coming storm. When called to the feed-trough they respond reluctantly in spite of their much-maligned appetites, and when the east wind strikes them they let out a concert of squeals that makes one understand just what the good Sir Walter meant when he described the singing at a conventicle as sounding "like a hog in a high wind." But enough of this, lest some patient reader should be tempted to exclaim with Job: "Should a wise man utter vain knowledge and fill his belly with the East Wind!"
Last Sunday afternoon there were a couple of black squirrels on the beech knoll, and I was glad it was Sunday, because the sight roused in me certain predatory feelings that I thought I had outlived. In the old evil days to see a black squirrel was to run for a gun, and there is no knowing of what might have happened if it hadn't been Sunday in a community where there is a proper regard for the Lord's Day Alliance. Still, the squirrels were comparatively safe. My own rifle is twenty miles away and the nearest shotgun that might be borrowed is in a farmhouse at a distance of three miles. But although circumstances made it possible for me to restrain myself, it will probably make little difference to the squirrels. They will almost certainly go into the bag of some city hunter. At the present time these gentry are ranging through the country, shooting up everything from chipmunks to stray hens, and no doubt imagining that, like Nimrod of old, they are "mighty hunters before the Lord." Why can't they stick to clay pigeons and spare the feelings of those who haven't got guns handy? It is really no wonder that the farmers are beginning to disfigure the country with "No shooting" and "No trespassing" signs. The few squirrels and quail that remain are farm pets rather than wild game. A few more seasons of the city hunter, and the boys in this district will know nothing about black squirrels, except what they learn from Sam Wood's vivid article in the new Fourth Reader.
Let no one imagine that, although winter is at hand, the country is without its hours of excitement. The first storm is the signal for tying up the young cattle in the stable for the first time, and any one who officiates at such a function will not lack an overflow of emotions. You can't take a dehorned yearling by the ear and tell him persuasively that a well-bedded stall and a full manger are much to be preferred to the pelting rain and the scorn of the outer dark. Whatever else has changed on the farm, the young cattle are just the same as ever and just as stubborn. The method of handling them, however, is changed somewhat. The old way used to be to take a stake out of the cordwood rack and try to make them see the light. At the present time the buggy-whip seems the handiest thing to use, and the whole family is called out to enjoy a game of "bull-in-the-ring." In spite of the best efforts of every one, including the collie dog, some of them will break away to the far end of the lane. Even after they have been driven one by one into the stable it is hard to make them understand that only one should go into a stall. They seem to prefer to go in bunches, and sometimes the language of the inside workers whose task it is to tie them up is feverish and painful.
_Nov. 7._--We were starting to town to have the children's photograph taken for Christmas when some one shouted:
"Look at the turkeys!"
Sure enough the turkeys were coming home. All fall they have been living in a coop at the woods where they could have plenty of territory to range over and live the semi-wild life in which they thrive best. They were so placed that they could forage in the woods or steal from the cornfield, besides getting their regular rations, and life for them was one grand sweet song. Every time the gobblers gobbled they did it so lustily that those who heard involuntarily murmured "Merry Christmas!" They had not visited the home buildings since being put at the woods, but now they were coming all together as fast as they could run. First, they would run a little to the left, then a little to the right, like the merry villagers approaching the front of the stage in a musical comedy. You would almost imagine that they were dodging between invisible trees. When they reached the barn yard the gobblers all gobbled and gave every evidence of being glad to be home again. We might have suspected that there was something going to happen when the turkeys acted in this way, but, being mere human beings depending on reason for guidance instead of instinct, we bundled ourselves into the buggy and went to town.
Having photographs taken, like everything else in this progressive age, has become a commonplace affair. We went about it without any more excitement than if we were buying groceries. After the group was placed, not posed--for it is no longer necessary to take a fixed position and hold it for a time exposure until all the feeling of a human being leaves one--the photographer squeezed a little rubber bulb, the shutter clicked, and the operation was over. Of course, there was the little matter of father getting down on all fours in a far corner of the studio and making believe that he was a bear so as to make the serious-minded baby smile, but we will not go into that. Still, it was a task requiring considerable artistic skill. The acting had to be finely shaded, with just enough realism to make the baby smile without making the older children laugh. While I have never set much store by my histrionic abilities, I venture to think that if the critics had seen my performance they would have given me press notices that would be worth preserving. As it was there were those present who mourned because they could not get a snapshot of me in that character. I think I played the bear just about as well as Bully Bottom would have played the lion. I roared "as gently as a sucking dove." As I have suggested, the act was very brief, and perhaps that was as well. I might not have been able to sustain the character for any length of time. I couldn't help remembering how different it was the first time I "had my picture took." I had a new home-made suit of which I felt duly proud and somehow got the necessary funds to have a tintype taken. I was placed in the most awkward position I have ever been in, and under the orders of the photographer I gazed steadily at a feather duster until the tears came into my eyes while he held his watch and counted like the referee at a prize-fight. Years afterwards it took two strong men to hold me when that tintype was brought out for the edification of a mixed company.
When we came out of the photographer's we realised what had ailed the turkeys. The snowstorm of the season was in progress. A strong wind was blowing from the east and driving the big flakes before it. It would have been an interesting sight if it were not that we were over three miles from home and would have to face it all the way. There was nothing to do, however, but to pile into the buggy and start for home. There were no woods anywhere to break the force of the storm, and soon we were all as white as Santa Claus. The children began to get cold, and father--oh, well, it was a trying situation. There seemed to be twice as many people in the buggy as when we were going down, but now that I think it over in a serene frame of mind I can see that nothing makes cramped quarters seem so over-crowded as a little touch of temper. Of course we got home safely, though cold and storm-beaten, and we finally got thawed out. Hereafter when the turkeys begin to act up in an unusual way I shall stay at home to see what happens. The ancients used to foretell the success of journeys by the flight of birds and I am inclined to think there may have been something in it. Those turkeys certainly seemed to know that our journey would be made uncomfortable by a storm.
Some people are trying hard to believe that we have sleighing, but I have no delusions on that point. An inch or two of light fluffy snow on a lumpy gravel road isn't sleighing. For the past week it has been threatening snow every day, and some has fallen, but it will take a lot more to make good sleighing. The temperature has ranged from zero to twenty-two above during the past week, and we have had real winter weather. From what I have heard about the temperature from others who own thermometers I am beginning to believe that watching the weather is something like fishing. People like to get an unusual record. I have heard four degrees below zero reported, but my thermometer is a prosy, unimaginative instrument that seems inclined to record things as it finds them. I also find that there are people who do not hesitate for a moment to dispute the thermometer. When the mercury is standing at twenty above I have heard them assert vehemently: "I don't care what your old thermometer says; it is colder to-day than it has been since the storm started. I guess I know when I feel cold, don't I?" Of course it is not the function of a thermometer to warm people up when it rises in the tube. If they choose to go out without enough clothes it does not record that fact, but they do. The use of thermometers seems to be having an influence on the climate. Judging by the stories one hears, we don't have such cold winters as they had before thermometers came into use. The effect seems to be the opposite of that reported by the Irishwoman who was asked how far it was to a certain town.
"It used to be only three miles, but one day a surveyor came along and measured the road and it has been five weary miles ever since." In that case science made things harder, but the reading of the thermometer in this section makes the climate seem less severe.