The next time that I read the enthralling narrative I was some years older, but the memory of the other telling was still fresh within me; and so, when, in the second chapter, I read about a savage old bull, one Hector, the property of Squire Flint, the meanest man in the county,—not that his meanness had anything to do with the story, but it is one of the conventions that a savage bull shall be owned by a cross, crabbed, and thoroughly stingy man,—I say, when I had read thus far my pulse quickened. Inexperienced as I was, I somehow sensed the coming situation. I seemed to know as by clairvoyance that, however limited the heroine’s wardrobe might be in some respects, there was one article of apparel that she surely possessed, or would possess in time to meet the exigencies. True enough, in the very next chapter her maiden aunt, a saintly old lady of ninety, died and bequeathed to her sorrowing niece a red pongee shawl of great value—as a bull-enrager. The book had seemed prosy at the start, but now that I knew what was coming, and that it was that that was coming, I read on breathlessly.
Needless to say that in the next chapter the young girl fell in love with a strapping young fellow, who immediately proposed that they take a walk. How well I knew, though they did not, where that walk would lead them! The mad bull—in this case it was mad, although any old bull will do, mad or not—was rampant in a lot a mile south of the young girl’s house, and they started to walk due north; but I knew full well that they would need to cross that particular pasture before they got home, and a few pages later found them climbing over a stone wall into the bull’s domain, and then they walked along, intent only on their new-found happiness. The day was chilly,—in the middle of a particularly hot July,—so that the girl could have an excuse to wear her red shawl. Now, having brought two of the actors upon the stage, the cue was soon given to the bull; and in a moment the happy lovers, feeling the ground tremble beneath their feet, turned and saw Hector, his horns gyrating with rage, his eyes bulging out, and his head lowered as he thundered along straight for the pongee bequest. To take her under his strong arm and to rush forward were the only things for the young man to do, and he did them; and then the rest ran as per schedule. I believe that in this case the young man threw the girl into a tree and then plunged down a woodchuck’s hole. At any rate, the girl was unharmed. That is the one unalterable formula in constructing these bull stories: save the girl unharmed. You may break the young man’s leg or arm, and you may do what you will with the bull, but the young girl must come through unscathed.
It was years before this moving incident ceased to hold me, and in that time how many changes were rung on it! Once only was the red shawl absent, and I wondered how in the world the bull was to be infuriated, as he was a singularly mild beast in the earlier chapters, and on Maydays had been festooned with garlands. Then, too, the girl was in deep mourning—for her lover! But the ten-acre lot was all right, and as the author was a clever man, I felt that he would find a way to run the act with a small cast and no properties. So I read on, and after wondering, together with the girl herself, what could have caused the peaceful old bovine to chase her, tail up and head down, the full length of a particularly long pasture, she and I found out when she realized that, the day being sunny, she had picked up her cousin’s parasol, which was necessarily of a brilliant scarlet. She had no lover, for, as I say, he had died—two chapters before the book was begun; but she did have presence of mind, and so she inserted the point of the parasol in the bull’s mouth, and then opened it, and while he was extracting it with his fore paws, she reached the fence and vaulted it in the usual way.
The possibilities of the incident are by no means exhausted, and so far from “Amos Judd” being the last story in which it was used, I saw it in a tale published this month, and this time with the full paraphernalia of hated rival, lover, red shawl, and all; but for me it had lost its zest. To be sure, if they would make the hero an athlete, and have him bravely stand his ground while the girl climbed to the top of an enormous elm, and then, just as the bull lowered his head to toss him, have the hero jump high in the air and make the bull pass beneath him, and as he reached ground again seize the bull, not by the horns, but by the tail, and, swinging it three times around his head, dash it against a tree and stun it,—that is, if its tail were securely welded to its body,—there would be an original treatment of the subject. And if its tail were but loosely fixed to it, the hero could pull it out, and the bull, filled with chagrin, would walk off, dismayed and humiliated.
But, pending that form of the story, I am studiously avoiding all novels that contain heroines with red shawls, or that make early reference to fierce bulls, or that speak of a certain ten-acre lot peculiarly adapted for lovers’ peregrinations; for, like the successful burglar, I know the combination.