RUMINATIONS OF A BOVINE GENTLEMAN.
AUTHOR’S CHARACTER.
“——Secum meditari ingenium est boûm.”
Virgil.
“Cows, of all animals, have the greatest propensity for rumination. For the most part, they are gentle, quiet, affectionate, unpretending, useful animals; all they require is kindness, and kindness they will return. Yet they have their antipathies and their whims, (red shawls are their abomination,) but, on the whole, they are inoffensive ruminators—not obtrusive, (except when they take a fancy to gore.) Their caresses are rough as their tongues; yet their roughest licks are meant in kindness. They never bite—their teeth are ground down. They are neither snappish nor carnivorous. They are remarkably fond of salt, and are quick to detect its presence. Although timid and yielding in general, they will fight any one, or any thing, in defense of their young.”
Baron Munchausen.
The last quoted author has described with remarkable correctness, in his remarks upon the cow, the character of a being, of whose existence he could not have dreamed—even of myself. Yes, even such I conceive to be my character—the coat fits, and I will put it on—“under such a shape I write.” Being in external appearance, a hale, stout, fat old bachelor of fifty, fond of the arm-chair and the comfortable dressing-gown, of easy fortune, retired habits, and few friends, I am, in soul, thought and disposition, and to all intents and purposes, a gentle old cow. Nor is there any thing humiliating in the confession. I esteem the character—I admire it. Would to heaven that in these matter-of-fact, dollar-and-cent days, there were more men of my nature! I injure no man; but if any man injures me, I have horns and can gore him, a tail and can lash him. In consideration of the unsullied purity of my character in my manly state, I have ventured to conceive that I am, in the bovine genus, that most amiable non-descript, an old maid. Still, I am no Io—nor Io turned old maid. I never was handsome enough to warm the soul of Jove, nor mad enough to swim the Bosphorus. I am not, never was, and never will be, Oestrus-driven. The many-eyed shepherd, Argus, if ordered to watch me, would have needed only one of his hundred eyes—he might have seen me, even with “half an eye,” quietly grazing, all the morning of my life, in the flowery meads of Literature, Moral Philosophy and Metaphysics—ever and anon, quenching my thirst with a draft from the pure stream of Helicon—and now, in the afternoon of life, reclined upon the grass, under the shade of a branching, verdant oak, placidly, philosophically, philanthropically, and withal meekly chewing the stock which I formerly stored.
——“Lacte alimentum cognoscimus.”
Were it not presumptuous, I would hope that my production might prove the pure, unadulterated, untainted “milk of human kindness.”