"Wal, I'll tell ye what I did," said Uncle Solon, his homely face puckering in a reminiscent smile. "I went out airly in the mornin', before I turned my cows to parster, and picked up the acorns under all the oak-trees. I sot down on a rock, took a hammer and cracked them green acorns, cracked 'em 'bout halfway open at the butt end. With my left-hand thumb and forefinger, I held the cracked acorn open by squeezing it, and with my right I dropped a pinch o' Cayenne pepper into each acorn, then let 'em close up again.
"It took me as much as an hour to fix up all them acorns. Then I laid them in little piles round under the trees, and turned out my cows. They started for the oaks fust thing, for they had got a habit of going there as soon as they were turned to parster in the morning. I stood by the bars and watched to see what would happen."
Here a still broader smile overspread Uncle Solon's face. "Within ten minutes I saw all them cows going lickety-split for the brook on the lower side o' the parster, and some of 'em were in such a hurry that they had their tails right up straight in the air!
"Ef you will believe it," Uncle Solon concluded, "not one of them cows teched an oak acorn afterward."
Another laugh went round; but an interruption occurred. A good lady from the city, who was spending the summer at a farmhouse near by, rose in indignation and made herself heard.
"I think that was a very cruel thing to do!" she cried. "I think it was shameful to treat your animals so!"
"Wal, now, ma'am, I'm glad you spoke as you did. I'm glad to know that you've got a kind heart," said Uncle Solon. "Kind-heartedness to man and beast is one of the best things in life. It's what holds this world together. Anybody that uses Cayenne pepper to torture an animal, or play tricks on it, is no friend of mine, I can tell ye.
"But you see, ma'am, it is this way. Country folks who keep dumb animals of all kinds know a good many things about them that city folks don't. Like human beings, dumb animals sometimes go all wrong, and have to be corrected. Of course, we can't reason with them. So we have to do the next best thing, and correct them as we can.
"I had a little dog once that I was tremendous fond of," Uncle Solon continued. "His name was Spot. He was a bird-dog, and so bright it seemed as if he could almost talk. But he took to suckin' eggs, and began to steal eggs at my neighbors' barns and hen-houses. He would fetch home eggs without crackin' the shells, and hold 'em in his mouth so cunning you wouldn't know he had anything there. He used to bury them eggs in the garden and all about.
"Of course that made trouble with the neighbors. It looked as if I'd have to kill Spot, and I hated to do it, for I loved that little dog. But I happened to think of Cayenne. So I took and blowed an egg—made a hole at each end and blowed out the white and the yelk. I mixed the white with Cayenne pepper and put it back through the hole. Then I stuck little pieces of white paper over both holes, and laid the egg where I knew Spot would find it.