“O you pretty little thing!” said Arthur. “Only look, Charles, at these spots on its back. I should like to have it for my own. Why must it be killed, pray?”
Ralph. To serve us for food, master Arthur. If we were to suffer all the cattle to live, they would eat all the grass and corn that we could grow; and then we should be starved, and you would not like that.
Arthur. No, I don’t want to starve; only I do not like to have things killed.
At this moment Mr. Mansfield came into the stable.
“We were talking about this poor calf, grandpapa,” said Charles. “Ralph says it is to be killed to-morrow to make veal. I am sorry for it; it has such a pretty coat!”
“It cannot be helped, my dear,” replied his grandfather. “But when it is dead, do you know what will be done with its pretty coat?” The boys answering they did not, “It will be sold,” said he, “to the tanner, who dresses the skins of cattle, or hides as they are called; and when it is properly prepared, it makes that beautiful, smooth kind of leather, that the large books you were looking at last night were bound with. It is often prepared to write upon, and is then called vellum. The skins of oxen and cows make a thick coarse leather, such as the soles of our boots and shoes.”
“And what becomes of the hair?” asked Charles.
“After the hide has been soaked for a long time,” replied Mr. Mansfield, “it comes off easily, and is put into that kind of mortar which is used to plaster walls, in order to keep them from crumbling and falling away. Did you never see in a white wall broken down in part, a heap of short hairs, and here and there perhaps a little loose piece of mortar hanging to them?”