Beautiful Joe

“How closely sheep bite,” exclaimed Miss Laura, pointing to one that was nibbling almost at his master’s feet.

“Very close, and they eat a good many things that cows don’t relish bitter weeds, and briars and shrubs, and the young ferns that come up in the spring.”

“I wish I could get hold of one of those dear little lambs,” said Miss Laura. “See that sweet little blackie back in the alders. Could you not coax him up?”

“He wouldn’t come here,” said her uncle kindly; “but I’ll try end get him for you.”

He rose, and after several efforts succeeded in capturing the black-faced creature, and bringing him up to the log. He was very shy of Miss Laura, but Mr. Wood held him firmly, and let her stroke his head as much as she liked. “You call him little,” said Mr. Wood; “if you put your arm around him, you’ll find he’s a pretty: substantial lamb. He was born in March. This is the last of July; he’ll be shorn the middle of next month, and think he’s quite grown up. Poor little animal! he had quite a struggle for life. The sheep were turned out to pasture in April. They can’t bear confinement as well as the cows, and as they bite closer they can be turned out earlier, and get on well by having good rations of corn in addition to the grass, which is thin and poor so early in the spring. This young creature was running by his mother’s side, rather a weak-legged, poor specimen of a lamb. Every night the flock was put under shelter, for the ground was cold, and though the sheep might not suffer from lying out-doors, the lambs would get chilled. One night this fellow’s mother got astray, and as Ben neglected to make the count, she wasn’t missed. I’m always anxious about my lambs in the spring and often get up in the night to look after them. That night I went out about two o’clock. I took it into my head, for some reason or other, to count them. I found a sheep and lamb missing, took my lantern and Bruno, who was some good at tracking sheep, and started out. Bruno barked and I called, and the foolish creature came to me, the little lamb staggering after her. I wrapped the lamb in my coat, took it to the house, made a fire, and heated some milk. Your Aunt Hattie heard me and got up. She won’t let me give brandy even to a dumb beast, so I put some ground sugar, which is just as good, in the milk, and forced it down the lamb’s throat. Then we wrapped an old blanket round him, and put him near the stove, and the next evening he was ready to go back to his mother. I petted him all through April, and gave him extras different kinds of meal, till I found what suited him best; now he does me credit.”

“Dear little lamb,” said Miss Laura, patting him, “How can you tell him from the others, uncle?”

“I know all their faces, Laura. A flock of sheep is just like a crowd of people. They all have different expressions, and have different dispositions.”

“They all look alike to me,” said Miss Laura.

“I dare say. You are not accustomed to them. Do you know how to tell a sheep’s age?”

“No, uncle.”

“Here, open your mouth, Cosset,” he said to the lamb that he still held. “At one year they have two teeth in the centre of the jaw. They get two teeth more every year up to five years. Then we say they have ‘a full mouth.’ After that you can’t tell their age exactly by the teeth. Now, run back to your mother,” and he let the lamb go.

“Do they always know their own mothers?” asked Miss Laura.

“Usually. Sometimes a ewe will not own her lamb. In that case we tie them up in a separate stall till she recognizes it. Do you see that sheep over there by the blueberry bushes the one with the very pointed ears?”

“Yes, uncle,” said Miss Laura.

“That lamb by her side is not her own. Hers died and we took its fleece and wrapped it around a twin lamb that we took from another ewe, and gave to her. She soon adopted it. Now, come this way, and I’ll show you our movable feeding troughs.”

He got up from the log, and Miss Laura followed him to the fence. “These big troughs are for the sheep,” said Mr. Wood, “and these shallow ones in the enclosure are for the lambs. See, there is just room enough for them to get under the fence. You should see the small creatures rush to them whenever we appear with their oats, and wheat, or bran, or whatever we are going to give them. If they are going to the butcher, they get corn meal and oil meal. Whatever it is, they eat it up clean. I don’t believe in cramming animals. I feed them as much as is good for them, and not any more. Now, you go sit down over there behind those bushes with Joe, and I’ll attend to business.”

Miss Laura found a shady place, and I curled myself up beside her. We sat there a long time, but we did not get tired, for it was amusing to watch the sheep and lambs. After a while, Mr. Wood came and sat down beside us. He talked some more about sheep-raising; then he said, “You may stay here longer if you like, but I must get down to the house. The work must be done, if the weather is hot.”

“What are you going to do now?” asked Miss Laura, jumping up.

“Oh! more sheep business. I’ve set out some young trees in the orchard, and unless I get chicken wire around them, my sheep will be barking them for me.”

“I’ve seen them,” said Miss Laura, “standing up on their hind legs and nibbling at the trees, taking off every shoot they can reach.”

“They don’t hurt the old trees,” said Mr. Wood; “but the young ones have to be protected. It pays me to take care of my fruit trees, for I get a splendid crop from them, thanks to the sheep.”

“Good-bye, little lambs and dear old sheep,” said Miss Laura, as her uncle opened the gate for her to leave the pasture. “I’ll come and see you again some time. Now, you had better go down to the brook in the dingle and have a drink. You look hot in your warm coats.”

“You’ve mastered one detail of sheep-keeping,” said Mr. Wood, as he slowly walked along beside his niece. “To raise healthy sheep one must have pure water where they can get to it whenever they like. Give them good water, good food, and a variety of it, good quarters cool in summer, comfortable in winter, and keep them quiet, and you’ll make them happy and make money on them.”

“I think I’d like sheep-raising,” said Miss Laura; “won’t you have me for your flock mistress, uncle?”

He laughed, and said he thought not, for she would cry every time any of her charge were sent to the butcher.

After this Miss Laura and I often went up to the pasture to see the sheep and the lambs. We used to get into a shady place where they could not see us, and watch them. One day I got a great surprise about the sheep. I had heard so much about their meekness that I never dreamed that they would fight; but it turned out that they did, and they went about it in such a business-like way, that I could not help smiling at them. I suppose that like most other animals they had a spice of wickedness in them. On this day a quarrel arose between two sheep; but instead of running at each other like two dogs they went a long distance apart, and then came rushing at each other with lowered heads. Their object seemed to be to break each other’s skull; but Miss Laura soon stopped them by calling out and frightening them apart. I thought that the lambs were more interesting than the sheep. Sometimes they fed quietly by their mothers’ sides, and at other times they all huddled together on the top of some flat rock or in a bare place, and seemed to be talking to each other with their heads close together. Suddenly one would jump down, and start for the bushes or the other side of the pasture. They would all follow pell-mell; then in a few minutes they would come rushing back again. It was pretty to see them playing together and having a good time before the sorrowful day of their death came.

CHAPTER XXX A JEALOUS OX

MR. WOOD had a dozen calves that he was raising, and Miss Laura sometimes went up to the stable to see them. Each calf was in a crib, and it was fed with milk. They had gentle, patient faces, and beautiful eyes, and looked very meek, as they stood quietly gazing about them, or sucking away at their milk. They reminded me of big, gentle dogs.

I never got a very good look at them in their cribs, but one day when they were old enough to be let out, I went up with Miss Laura to the yard where they were kept. Such queer, ungainly, large-boned creatures they were, and such a good time they were having, running and jumping and throwing up their heels.

Mrs. Wood was with us, and she said that it was not good for calves to be closely penned after they got to be a few weeks old. They were better for getting out and having a frolic. She stood beside Miss Laura for a long time, watching the calves, and laughing a great deal at their awkward gambols. They wanted to play, but they did not seem to know how to use their limbs.

They were lean calves, and Miss Laura asked her aunt why all the nice milk they had taken had not made them fat. “The fat will come all in good time,” said Mrs. Wood. “A fat calf makes a poor cow, and a fat, small calf isn’t profitable to fit for sending to the butcher. It’s better to have a bony one and fatten it. If you come here next summer, you’ll see a fine show of young cattle, with fat sides, and big, open horns, and a good coat of hair. Can you imagine,” she went on, indignantly, “that any one could be cruel enough to torture such a harmless creature as a calf?”

“No, indeed,” replied Miss Laura. “Who has been doing it?”

“Who has been doing it?” repeated Mrs. Wood, bitterly; “they are doing it all the time. Do you know what makes the nice, white veal one gets in big cities? The calves are bled to death. They linger for hours, and moan their lives away. The first time I heard it, I was so angry that I cried for a day, and made John promise that he’d never send another animal of his to a big city to be killed. That’s why all of our stock goes to Hoytville, and small country places. Oh, those big cities are awful places, Laura. It seems to me that it makes people wicked to huddle them together. I’d rather live in a desert than a city. There’s Ch o. Every night since I’ve been there I pray to the Lord either to change the hearts of some of the wicked people in it, or to destroy them off the face of the earth. You know three years ago I got run down, and your uncle said I’d got to have a change, so he sent me off to my brother’s in Ch o. I stayed and enjoyed myself pretty well, for it is a wonderful city, till one day some Western men came in, who had been visiting the slaughter houses outside the city. I sat and listened to their talk, and it seemed to me that I was hearing the description of a great battle. These men were cattle dealers, and had been sending stock to Ch o, and they were furious that men, in their rage for wealth, would so utterly ignore and trample on all decent and humane feelings as to torture animals as the Ch o men were doing.

“It is too dreadful to repeat the sights they saw. I listened till they were describing Texan steers kicking in agony under the torture that was practised, and then I gave a loud scream, and fainted dead away. They had to send for your uncle, and he brought me home, and for days and days I heard nothing but shouting and swearing, and saw animals dripping with blood, and crying and moaning in their anguish, and now, Laura, if you’d lay down a bit of Ch o meat, and cover it with gold, I’d spurn it from me. But what am I saying? you’re as white as a sheet. Come and see the cow stable. John’s just had it whitewashed.”

Miss Laura took her aunt’s arm, and I walked slowly behind them. The cow stable was a long building, well-built, and with no chinks in the walls, as Jenkins’s stable had. There were large windows where the afternoon sun came streaming in, and a number of ventilators, and a great many stalls. A pipe of water ran through the stalls from one end of the stable to the other. The floor was covered with sawdust and leaves, and the ceiling and tops of the walls were whitewashed. Mrs. Wood said that her husband would not have the walls a glare of white right down to the floor, because he thought it injured the animals’ eyes. So the lower parts of the walls were stained a dark, brown color.

There were doors at each end of the stable, and just now they stood open, and a gentle breeze was blowing through, but Mrs. Wood said that when the cattle stood in the stalls, both doors were never allowed to be open at the same time. Mr. Wood was most particular to have no drafts blowing upon his cattle. He would not have them chilled, and he would not have them overheated. One thing was as bad as the other. And during the winter they were never allowed to drink icy water. He took the chill off the water for his cows, just as Mrs. Wood did for her hens.

“You know, Laura,” Mrs. Wood went on, “that when cows are kept dry and warm, they eat less than when they are cold and wet. They are so warm-blooded that if they are cold, they have to eat a great deal to keep up the heat of their bodies, so it pays better to house and feed them well. They like quiet, too. I never knew that till I married your uncle. On our farm, the boys always shouted and screamed at the cows when they were driving them, and sometimes they made them run. They’re never allowed to do that here.”

“I have noticed how quiet this farm seems,” said Miss Laura. “You have so many men about, and yet there is so little noise.”

“Your uncle whistles a great deal,” said Mrs. Wood. “Have you noticed that? He whistles when he’s about his work, and then he has a calling whistle that nearly all of the animals know, and the men run when they hear it. You’d see every cow in this stable turn its head, if he whistled in a certain way outside. He says that he got into the way of doing it when he was a boy and went for his father’s cows. He trained them so that he’d just stand in the pasture and whistle, and they’d come to him. I believe the first thing that inclined me to him was his clear, happy whistle. I’d hear him from our house away down on the road, jogging along with his cart, or driving in his buggy. He says there is no need of screaming at any animal. It only frightens and angers them. They will mind much better if you speak clearly and distinctly. He says there is only one thing an animal hates more than to be shouted at, and that’s to be crept on to have a person sneak up to it and startle it. John says many a man is kicked, because he comes up to his horse like a thief. A startled animal’s first instinct is to defend itself. A dog will spring at you, and a horse will let his heels fly. John always speaks or whistles to let the stock know when he’s approaching.”

“Where is uncle this afternoon?” asked Miss Laura.

“Oh, up to his eyes in hay. He’s even got one of the oxen harnessed to a hay cart.”

“I wonder whether it’s Duke?” said Miss Laura.

“Yes, it is. I saw the star on his forehead,” replied Mrs. Wood.

“I don’t know when I have laughed at anything as much as I did at him the other day,” said Miss Laura. “Uncle asked me if I had ever heard of such a thing as a jealous ox, and I said no. He said, ‘Come to the barnyard, and I’ll show you one.’ The oxen were both there, Duke with his broad face, and Bright so much sharper and more intelligent looking. Duke was drinking at the trough there, and uncle said: ‘Just look at him. Isn’t he a great, fat, self-satisfied creature, and doesn’t he look as if he thought the world owed him a living, and he ought to get it?’ Then he got the card and went up to Bright, and began scratching him. Duke lifted his head from the trough, and stared at uncle, who paid no attention to him but went on carding Bright, and stroking and petting him. Duke looked so angry. He left the trough, and with the water dripping from his lips, went up to uncle, and gave him a push with his horns. Still uncle took no notice, and Duke almost pushed him over. Then uncle left off petting Bright, and turned to him. He said Duke would have treated him roughly, if he hadn’t. I never saw a creature look as satisfied as Duke did, when uncle began to card him. Bright didn’t seem to care, and only gazed calmly at them.”

“I’ve seen Duke do that again and again,” said Mrs. Wood. “He’s the most jealous animal that we have, and it makes him perfectly miserable to have your uncle pay attention to any animal but him. What queer creatures these dumb brutes are. They’re pretty much like us in most ways. They’re jealous and resentful, and they can love or hate equally well and forgive, too, for that matter; and suffer how they can suffer, and so patiently, too. Where is the human being that would put up with the tortures that animals endure and yet come out so patient?”

“Nowhere,” said Miss Laura, in a low voice “we couldn’t do it.”

“And there doesn’t seem to be an animal,” Mrs. Wood went on, “no matter how ugly and repulsive it is, but what has some lovable qualities. I have just been reading about some sewer rats, Louise Michel’s rats.”

“Who is she?” asked Miss Laura.

“A celebrated Frenchwoman, my dear child, ‘the priestess of pity and vengeance,’ Mr. Stead calls her. You are too young to know about her but I remember reading of her in 1872, during the Commune troubles in France. She is an anarchist, and she used to wear a uniform, and shoulder a rifle, and help to build barricades. She was arrested and sent as a convict to one of the French penal colonies. She has a most wonderful love for animals in her heart, and when she went home she took four cats with her. She was put into prison again in France and took the cats with her. Rats came about her cell and she petted them and taught her cats to be kind to them. Before she got the cats thoroughly drilled one of them bit a rat’s paw. Louise nursed the rat till it got well, then let it down by a string from her window. It went back to its sewer, and, I suppose, told the other rats how kind Louise had been to it, for after that they came to her cell without fear. Mother rats brought their young ones and placed them at her feet, as if to ask her protection for them. The most remarkable thing about them was their affection for each other. Young rats would chew the crusts thrown to old toothless rats, so that they might more easily eat them, and if a young rat dared help itself before an old one, the others punished it.”

“That sounds very interesting, auntie,” said Miss Laura. “Where did you read it?”

“I have just got the magazine,” said Mrs. Wood; “you shall have it as soon as you come into the house.”

“I love to be with you, dear auntie,” said Miss Laura, putting her arm affectionately around her, as they stood in the doorway; “because you understand me when I talk about animals. I can’t explain it,” went on my dear young mistress, laying her hand on her heart, “the feeling I have here for them. I just love a dumb creature, and I want to stop and talk to every one I see. Sometimes I worry poor Bessie Drury, and I’m so sorry, but I can’t help it. She says, ‘What makes you so silly, Laura?’”

Miss Laura was standing just where the sunlight shone through her light-brown hair, and made her face all in a glow. I thought she looked more beautiful than I had ever seen her before, and I think Mrs. Wood thought the same. She turned around and put both hands on Miss Laura’s shoulders. “Laura,” she said, earnestly, “there are enough cold hearts in the world. Don’t you ever stifle a warm or tender feeling toward a dumb creature. That is your chief attraction, my child: your love for everything that breathes and moves. Tear out the selfishness from your heart, if there is any there, but let the love and pity stay. And now let me talk a little more to you about the cows. I want to interest you in dairy matters. This stable is new since you were here, and we’ve made a number of improvements. Do you see those bits of rock salt in each stall? They are for the cows to lick whenever they want to. Now, come here, and I’ll show you what we call ‘The Black Hole.’”

It was a tiny stable off the main one, and it was very dark and cool. “Is this a place of punishment?” asked Miss Laura, in surprise.

Mrs. Wood laughed heartily. “No, no; a place of pleasure. Sometimes when the flies are very bad and the cows are brought into the yard to be milked and a fresh swarm settles on them, they are nearly frantic; and though they are the best cows in New Hampshire, they will kick a little. When they do, those that are the worst are brought in here to be milked where there are no flies. The others have big strips of cotton laid over their backs and tied under them, and the men brush their legs with tansy tea, or water with a little carbolic acid in it. That keeps the flies away, and the cows know just as well that it is done for their comfort, and stand quietly till the milking is over. I must ask John to have their nightdresses put on sometimes for you to see. Harry calls them ‘sheeted ghosts,’ and they do look queer enough sending all round the barnyard robed in white.”

CHAPTER XXXI IN THE COW STABLE

“ISN’T it a strange thing,” said Miss Laura, “that a little thing like a fly, can cause so much annoyance to animals as well to people? Sometimes when I am trying to get more sleep in the morning, their little feet tickle me so that I am nearly frantic and have to fly out of bed.”

“You shall have some netting to put over your bed,” said Mrs. Wood; “but suppose, Laura, you had no hands to brush away the flies. Suppose your whole body was covered with them; and you were tied up somewhere and could not get loose. I can’t imagine more exquisite torture myself. Last summer the flies here were dreadful. It seems to me that they are getting worse and worse every year, and worry the animals more. I believe it is because the birds are getting thinned out all over the country. There are not enough of them to catch the flies. John says that the next improvements we make on the farm are to be wire gauze at all the stable windows and screen doers to keep the little pests from the horses and cattle.

“One afternoon last summer, Mr. Maxwell’s mother came for me to go for a drive with her. The heat was intense, and when we got down by the river, she proposed getting out of the phaeton and sitting under the trees, to see if it would be any cooler. She was driving a horse that she had got from the hotel in the village, a roan horse that was clipped, and check-reined, and had his tail docked. I wouldn’t drive behind a tailless horse now. Then, I wasn’t so particular. However, I made her unfasten the check-rein before I’d set foot in the carriage. Well, I thought that horse would go mad. He’d tremble and shiver and look go pitifully at us. The flies were nearly eating him up. Then he’d start a little. Mrs. Maxwell had a weight at his head to hold him, but he could easily have dragged that. He was a good dispositioned horse, and he didn’t want to run away, but he could not stand still. I soon jumped up and slapped him, and rubbed him till my hands were dripping wet. The poor brute was so grateful and would keep touching my arm with his nose. Mrs. Maxwell sat under the trees fanning herself and laughing at me, but I didn’t care. How could I enjoy myself with a dumb creature writhing in pain before me?”

“A docked horse can neither eat nor sleep comfortably in the fly season. In one of our New England villages they have a sign up, ‘Horses taken in to grass. Long tails, one dollar and fifty cents. Short tails, one dollar.’ And it just means that the short-tailed ones are taken on cheaper, because they are so bothered by the flies that they can’t eat much, while the long-tailed ones are able to brush them away and eat in peace. I read the other day of a Buffalo coal dealer’s horse that was in such an agony through flies, that he committed suicide. You know animals will do that. I’ve read of horses and dogs drowning themselves. This horse had been clipped and his tail was docked, and he was turned out to graze. The flies stung him till he was nearly crazy. He ran up to a picket fence, and sprang up on the sharp spikes. There he hung, making no effort to get down. Some men saw him, and they said it was a clear case of suicide.

“I would like to have the power to take every man who cuts off a horse’s tail, and tie his hands, and turn him out in a field in the hot sun, with little clothing on, and plenty of flies about. Then we would see if he wouldn’t sympathize with the poor, dumb beast. It’s the most senseless thing in the world, this docking fashion. They’ve a few flimsy arguments about a horse with a docked tail being stronger-backed, like a short-tailed sheep, but I don’t believe a word of it. The horse was made strong enough to do the work he’s got to do, and man can’t improve on him. Docking is a cruel, wicked thing. Now, there’s a ghost of an argument in favor of check-reins, on certain occasions. A fiery, young horse can’t run away, with an overdrawn check, and in speeding horses a tight check-rein will make them hold their heads up, and keep them from choking. But I don’t believe in raising colts in a way to make them fiery, and I wish there wasn’t a race horse on the face of the earth, so if it depended race on me, every kind of check-rein would go. It’s pity we women can’t vote, Laura. We’d do away with a good many abuses.”