The Story of a Wandering Sheep
The sheep is generally regarded as a very uninteresting animal, but occasionally there is an exception.
A man who had a small farm, stocked mostly with cattle, had a few sheep which he kept in a small pasture by themselves. Among this flock was a young masculine who had gradually acquired the opinion that he was an unusually brilliant and promising sheep. In order to exhibit the good opinion he had of himself he developed a pugnacious tendency and a disposition to wander about. Escaping from the pasture, he was reported one day as being a trespasser on the farm of a near neighbor.
The following evening the owner of the young sheep proceeded to the neighbor’s farm to reclaim the wanderer and put him back where he belonged. It had been a showery day and everything was saturated with rain. Approaching the farmyard where the strayed sheep was reported to be, the owner saw the wife of the farmer engaged in milking a cow. Incidentally, he saw the sheep on the other side of the cow from the matron. And almost immediately he saw other developments. The sheep had been regarded with strong disfavor by the strange cows with which he was surrounded and with a spirit of resentment he suddenly started head down at the cow being milked. Although the lady who was busily engaged in the milking process was totally unconscious of what was happening, it was not so with the cow. Just at the psychological moment, the cow sprang forward and the sheep came in violent contact with the lady and the milk pail. The impact was so great that the woman was thrown over backward in the soft mud of the barnyard, the contents of the pail being liberally distributed about her robust person.
Although the physical injury was not serious, the damage to the lady’s dignity was such that the owner of the sheep decided that it was a very inappropriate time to claim his missing property and hastily beat his retreat to make his reappearance when the lady’s wrath had somewhat subsided.
While the lady sheep is a model of amiability under practically all circumstances, as before suggested, the male of the species develops egotism at a very early date; he also develops a tendency to resent anything and everything that reflects upon his dignity. So, while it is entirely appropriate to emphasize the educational advantages of farm life to growing boys and girls as calculated to develop many desirable qualities, it is easily possible for such contact to result disastrously to the young male sheep as evidenced by the following depressing incident.