I understand all about Milligan. He’s a cross, cranky old Irishman with a temper tied up in bow-knots, who prods his men with the bull-stick six days a week and schemes to get them salary raises on the seventh, when he ought to be listening to the sermon; who puts the black-snake on a clerk’s hide when he sends a letter to Oshkosh that ought to go to Kalamazoo, and begs him off when the old man wants to have him fired for it. Altogether he’s a hard, crabbed, generous, soft-hearted, loyal, bully old boy, who’s been with the house since we took down the shutters for the first time, and who’s going to stay with it till we put them up for the last time.
But all that apart, you want to get it firmly fixed in your mind that you’re going to have a Milligan over you all your life, and if it isn’t a Milligan it will be a Jones or a Smith, and the chances are that you’ll find them both harder to get along with than this old fellow. And if it isn’t Milligan or Jones or Smith, and you ain’t a butcher, but a parson or a doctor, or even the President of the United States, it’ll be a way-back deacon, or the undertaker, or the machine. There isn’t any such thing as being your own boss in this world unless you’re a tramp, and then there’s the constable.
Like the old man if you can, but give him no cause to dislike you. Keep your self-respect at any cost, and your upper lip stiff at the same figure. Criticism can properly come only from above, and whenever you discover that your boss is no good you may rest easy that the man who pays his salary shares your secret. Learn to give back a bit from the base-burner, to let the village fathers get their feet on the fender and the sawdust box in range, and you’ll find them making a little room for you in turn. Old men have tender feet, and apologies are poor salve for aching corns. Remember that when you’re in the right you can afford to keep your temper, and that when you’re in the wrong you can’t afford to lose it.
When you’ve got an uncertain cow it’s all O.K. to tie a figure eight in her tail, if you ain’t thirsty, and it’s excitement you’re after; but if you want peace and her nine quarts, you will naturally approach her from the side, and say, So-boss, in about the same tone that you would use if you were asking your best girl to let you hold her hand.
Of course, you want to be sure of your natural history facts and learn to distinguish between a cow that’s a kicker, but whose intentions are good if she’s approached with proper respect, and a hooker, who is vicious on general principles, and any way you come at her. There’s never any use fooling with an animal of that sort, brute or human. The only safe place is the other side of the fence or the top of the nearest tree.
“Bill Budlong was always the last man to come up to the mourners' bench.”
When I was clerking in Missouri, a fellow named Jeff Hankins moved down from Wisconsin and bought a little clearing just outside the town. Jeff was a good talker, but a bad listener, and so we learned a heap about how things were done in Wisconsin, but he didn’t pick up much information about the habits of our Missouri fauna. When it came to cows, he had had a liberal education and he made out all right, but by and by it got on to ploughing time and Jeff naturally bought a mule—a little moth-eaten cuss, with sad, dreamy eyes and droopy, wiggly-woggly ears that swung in a circle as easy as if they ran on ball-bearings. Her owner didn’t give her a very good character, but Jeff was too busy telling how much he knew about horses to pay much attention to what anybody was saying about mules. So finally the seller turned her loose in Jeff’s lot, told him he wouldn’t have any trouble catching her if he approached her right, and hurried off out of range.
Next morning at sunup Jeff picked out a bridle and started off whistling Buffalo Gals—he was a powerful pretty whistler and could do the Mocking Bird with variations—to catch the mule and begin his plowing. The animal was feeding as peaceful as a water-color picture, and she didn’t budge; but when Jeff began to get nearer, her ears dropped back along her neck as if they had lead in them. He knew that symptom and so he closed up kind of cautious, aiming for her at right angles and gurgling, “Muley, muley, here muley; that’s a good muley,” sort of soothing and caressing-like. Still she didn’t stir and Jeff got right up to her and put one arm over her back and began to reach forward with the bridle, when something happened. He never could explain just what it was, but we judged from the marks on his person that the mule had reached forward and kicked the seat of his trousers with one of her prehensile hind feet; and had reached back and caught him on the last button of his waistcoat with one of her limber fore feet; and had twisted around her elastic neck and bit off a mouthful of his hair. When Jeff regained consciousness, he reckoned that the only really safe way to approach a mule was to drop on it from a balloon.