Dear Mr. Durham, Our mutual friend, Mr. Byers, has sent me your most touching letter of May 27th, relating to the unfortunate usurpation of the B&O right of way by your pet bull. Fortunately, however, the incident does not—at least so I assume—extinguish your "line". Naturally, the distinguished bull was a thoroughbred, and in this respect he has nothing on our train, as it is also a thoroughbred, and when thoroughbred meets thoroughbred something must happen. . .
It may be necessary to have our representative call upon you and the bull to ascertain your respective incapacities as a result of the collision. I regret, however, that under the laws of the great State of Indiana, your own mental pain and anguish is not an element of damage and, so far as I know, there is no way of proving that of the bull other than by hearsay, which of course is incompetent. Very truly, Frank J. Goebel Assistant General Solicitor
THE REPLY OF "THE BULL."
June 3, 1933
Honorable Frank J. Goebel,
Asst. Gen. Solicitor
Baltimore & Ohio Railroad Company
Cincinnati, Ohio
Dear Sir: I am told I am a Hereford bull. . .I was supreme on the Durham farm, and lord of all I surveyed—that is, until recently. . .
For years I had noticed some sort of animal or monster wend its way shrieking and rumbling across our land, always going along the same trail without variation. In daytime its head emitted black smoke and a terrific noise with its rattling body trailing back, slender and long like a snake. At night it had an enormously bright eye in the center of its mammoth head, and belched forth fire sometimes. . . We got used to it, and finding it to be totally unsociable, we adopted the wise policy of ignoring it—that is, until recently. . .
I was grazing along what my owner says Ring Lardner would laughingly call a fence, and just stepped through, or on, or over, it to where the grass looked greener. And then I went on and up to where there was less grass and more gravel, and some ties and rails. . . Then something happened, and I went winding down and down. Oh, the pain!
My owner . . . has said more nice things about me and my good qualities and worth since I got hurt than he ever said in all the years gone before. . . He said to some men who came out to see me after I was damn near killed: "Did you ever in your life see so good an individual bull, any where, any time? Look at that head. Imagine what it looked like before he got hit. . . I wouldn't have taken a thousand dollars for him before he was hurt. No. I wouldn't have taken two thousand dollars, nor there isn't a man among you who would have taken five thousand for him if he had been yours". . . Then my owner said: "It's confidential, of course, and I know you men well enough to know you'll keep it to yourselves. Ex-Governor Warren McCray had a man down here secretly to buy him at $10,000—to head his herd."
"Now," my owner says, "what would you appraise him at? I want to be fair with the railroad. . . You and I are farmers, and everybody knows a farmer has a hard time, and all farmers should stand together, but at the same time be fair, of course, to the railroads. Naturally we all know that railroads are not fair, and are big rich corporations, paying great high salaries to presidents and lawyers, especially lawyers, for sitting around in swivel chairs, milking the public, fixing mythical valuations to base freight rates on, and then eternally asking for rate increases when they are so high now nobody can ship anything over them . . . . .
"Still, I want you men to be absolutely fair with the railroad . . . . ."