Experience with a Refractory Cow.
[This piece is very effective given in costume.]
We used to keep a cow when we lived in the country, and sich a cow! Law sakes! Why, she used to come to be milked as reg’lar as clock-work. She’d knock at the gate with her horns, jest as sensible as any other human critter.
Her name was Rose. I never knowed how she got that name, for she was black as a kittle.
Well, one day Rose got sick, and wouldn’t eat nothing, poor thing! and a day or so arter she died. I raly do believe
I cried when that poor critter was gone. Well, we went for a little spell without a cow, but I told Mr. Scruggins it wouldn’t do, no way nor no how; and he gin in. Whenever I said must Mr. Scruggins knowed I meant it. Well, a few days arter, he come home with the finest cow and young calf you ever seed. He gin thirty dollars for her and the calf, and two levies to a man to help bring her home. Well, they drove her into the back yard, and Mr. Scruggins told me to come out and see her, and I did; and I went up to her jest as I used to did to Rose, and when I said “Poor Sukey,” would you believe it? the nasty brute kicked me right in the fore part of my back; her foot catched into my dress—bran-new dress, too—cost two levies a yard, and she took a levy’s-worth right out as clean as the back of my hand.
I screeched right out and Mr. Scruggins kotched me jest as I was dropping, and he carried me to the door, and I went in and sot down. I felt kind o’ faintish, I was so abominable skeered.
Mr. Scruggins said he would larn her better manners, so he picked up the poker and went out, but I had hardly began to get a leetle strengthened up afore in rushed my dear husband a-flourishing the poker, and that vicious cow arter him like all mad. Mr. Scruggins jumped into the room, and, afore he had time to turn round and shut the door, that desperate brute was in, too.
Mr. Scruggins got up on the dining-room table, and I run into the parlor. I thought I’d be safe there, but I was skeered so bad that I forgot to shut the door, and, sakes alive! after hooking over the dining-room table and rolling Mr. Scruggins off, in she walked into the parlor, shaking her head as much as to say: “I’ll give you a touch now.” I jumped on a chair, but thinking that warn’t high enough, I got one foot on the
brass knob of the Franklin stove, and put the other on the mantel-piece. You ought to ha’ seen that cow in our parlor; she looked all round as if she was ’mazed; at last she looked in the looking-glass, and thought she seed another cow exhibiting anger like herself; she shuck her head and pawed the carpet, and so did her reflection, and—would you believe it?—that awful brute went right into my looking-glass.