In consequence, probably, of eating so much indigestible bark, first one, then another, "lost her cud," that is, was unable to raise her food for rumination at night; and as cattle must ruminate, we soon had several sick animals to care for.
In such cases, if the animal can only be started chewing an artificially prepared cud she will often, on swallowing it, "raise" again; and rumination, thus started, will proceed once more, and the congestion be relieved.
For a week or more we were kept busy, night and morning, furnishing the bark-eaters with cuds, prepared from the macerated inner bark of sweet elder, impregnated with rennet. These had to be put in the mouths of the cows by main strength, and held there till from force of habit the animal began chewing, swallowing and "raising" again.
What was stranger, this unnatural appetite for gnawing bark was not confined wholly to cows that fall; the shoats out in the orchard took to gnawing apple-trees, and spoiled several valuable Sweetings and Gravensteins before the damage was discovered. It was an "off year." Every living thing seemed to require a tonic.
The bitter milk proved the most difficult problem. No bitter weed or foul grass grew in the pasture. The herd had grazed there for years; nothing of the sort had been noticed before.
The village apothecary, who styled himself a chemist, was asked to give an opinion on a specimen of the cream; but he failed to throw much light on the subject. "There seems to be tannic acid in this milk," he said.
At about that time uncle Solon Chase came along one afternoon, and gave one of his harangues at our schoolhouse. I well remember the old fellow and his high-pitched voice. Addison, I recall, refused to go to hear him; but Willis Murch and I went. We were late and had difficulty in squeezing inside the room. Uncle Solon, as everybody called him, stood at the teacher's desk, and was talking in his quaint, homely way: a lean man in farmer's garb, with a kind of Abraham Lincoln face, honest but humorous, droll yet practical; a face afterwards well known from Maine to Iowa.
"We farmers are bearin' the brunt of the hard times," Uncle Solon said. "'Tain't fair. Them rich fellers in New York, and them rich railroad men that's running things at Washington have got us down. 'Tis time we got up and did something about it. 'Tis time them chaps down there heard the tramp o' the farmers' cowhide boots, comin' to inquire into this. And they'll soon hear 'em. They'll soon hear the tramp o' them old cowhides from Maine to Texas.
"Over in our town we have got a big stone mortar. It will hold a bushel of corn. When the first settlers came there and planted a crop, they hadn't any gristmill. So they got together and made that 'ere mortar out of a block of granite. They pecked that big, deep hole in it with a hammer and hand-drill. That hole is more'n two feet deep, but they pecked it out, and then made a big stone pestle nearly as heavy as a man could lift, to pound their corn.
"They used to haul that mortar and pestle round from one log house to another, and pounded all their corn-meal in it.