Then there was another reason: After the play went on he found it interfered with his giving the best that was in him to his art if he had to go on for a performance all bumpy in spots; also he discovered that grease paint had the effect of irritating a sting rather than soothing it. The other afternoon he came over and offered to give me his last remaining hive of bees. Indeed, he almost pressed them on me.
I declined though. I told him to unload his little playmates on some stranger; that I valued his friendship and hoped to keep it; the more especially, as I now confessed to him, since I had lately thought that if literature ever petered out I might take up the drama as a congenial mode of livelihood, and in such case would naturally benefit through the good offices of a friend who was already in the business and doing well at it. Not, however, that I felt any doubt regarding my ultimate success. I do not mean by this that I have seriously considered playwriting as a regular profession. Once I did seriously consider it, but nobody else did, and especially the critics didn't. Remembering what happened to the only dramatic offering I ever wrote, I long ago made up my mind that if ever I wrote another play—which, please heaven, I shall not—I would call it Solomon Grundy, whether I had a character of that name in it or not. You may recall what happened to the original Solomon Grundy—how he was born on a Monday, began to fail on Thursday, passed away on Saturday of the same week and was laid to eternal rest on Sunday. So even though I never do another play I have the name picked out and ready and waiting.
No, my next venture into the realm of Thespis, should necessity direct my steps thither, would land me directly upon the histrionic boards. Ever since I began to fill out noticeably I have nourished this ambition secretly. As I look at it, a pleasing plumpness of outline should be no handicap but on the contrary rather a help. My sex of course is against my undertaking to play The Two Orphans, otherwise I should feel no doubt of my ability to play both of them, and if they had a little sister I shouldn't be afraid to take her on, too. But I do rather fancy myself in the title rôles of The Corsican Brothers. If I should show some enterprising manager how he might pay out one salary and save another, surely the idea would appeal to him; and some of these fine days I may give the idea a try. So having this contingency in mind I gently but firmly told my friend to take his bees elsewhere. I told him I had no intention of looking a gift bee in the mouth.
We have another neighbor who has gone in rather extensively for blooded stock with the intention ultimately of producing butter and milk for the city market. During practically all his active life he has been a successful theatrical manager, which naturally qualifies him for the cow business. He is doing very well at it too. So long as he continues to enjoy successful theatrical seasons he feels that he will be able to go on with cows. Being a shrewd and far seeing business man he has it all figured out that a minimum of three substantial enduring hits every autumn will justify him in maintaining his herd at its present proportions, whereas with four shows on Broadway all playing to capacity he might even increase it to the extent of investing in a few more head of registered thoroughbred stock.
From him I have gleaned much regarding cows. Before, the life of a cow fancier had been to me as a closed book. Generally speaking, cows, so far as my personal knowledge went, were divided roughly into regular cows running true to sex, and the other kind of cows, which were invariably referred to with a deep blush by old-fashioned maiden ladies. True enough, we owned cows during the earlier stages of our rural life; in fact, we own one now, a mild-eyed creature originally christened Buttercup but called by us Sahara because of her prevalent habits. But gentle bone-dry Sahara is just a plain ordinary cow of undistinguished ancestry. In the preceding generations of her line scandal after scandal must have occurred; were she a bagpipe solo instead of a cow scarcely could she have in her more mixed strains than she has. We acquired her at a bargain in an auction sale; she is a bargain to any one desiring a cow of settled and steady habits, regular at her meals, always with an unfailing appetite and having a deep far-reaching voice. There is also an expectation that some future day we may also derive from her milk. However, this contingency rests, as one might say, upon the laps of the gods.
The point I am getting at though is that Sahara, whatever else of merit she may possess in the matters of a kind disposition and a willingness to eat whatever is put before her, is after all but a mere common country-bred cow; whereas the cows whose society my wealthy neighbor cultivates are the pedigreed aristocrats of their breed, and for buying and selling purposes are valued accordingly. Why, from the way the proprietors of registered cows brag about their ancient lineage and their blue-blooded forbears you might think they were all from South Carolina or Massachusetts—the cows, I mean, not necessarily the proprietors.
So it is with the man of whom I have been speaking. Having become a breeder of fancy stock he now appraises a cow not for what she can do on her own intrinsic merits but for the size of her family tree, provided she brings with her the documents to prove it. So far as cows are concerned he has become a confirmed ancestor worshipper. I am sure he would rather own a quarter interest in a collateral descendant of old Prince Bullcon the First of the royal family of the Island of Guernsey, even though the present bearer of the name were but an indifferent milker and of unsettled habits, than to be the sole possessor of some untitled but versatile cow giving malted milk and whipped cream. Such vagaries I cannot fathom. In a democratic country like this, or at least in a country which used to be democratic, it seems to me we should value a cow not for what her grandparents may have been; not for the names emblazoned on her genealogical record, but for what she herself is.
The other Sunday we drove over to his place ostensibly to pay a neighborly call but really to plant distress in his fireside circle by incidentally mentioning that our young grapevines were bearing magnificently.
You see, a member of the Gloat Club is expected to work at his trade Sundays as well as weekdays; and besides we had heard that his arbors, with the coming of the autumn, had seemed a bit puny. So the opportunity was too good to be lost and we went over.
After I had driven the harpoon into his soul and watched it sink into him up to the barbs he took me out to see the latest improvements he had made in his cow bam and to call upon the newest addition to his herd. These times you can bed a hired hand down almost anywhere, but if you go in for blooded stock you must surround them with the luxuries to which they have been accustomed, else they are apt to go into a decline. He invited my inspection of the porcelain-walled stalls and the patent feeding devices and the sanitary fixtures which abounded on every hand, and to his recently installed cream separator. In my youth the only cream separator commonly in vogue was the type of drooping mustache worn by the average deputy sheriff, and anyhow, with it, cream separating was merely incidental, the real purposes of the mustache being to be ornamental and impressive and subtly to convey a proper respect for the majesty of the law. Often a town marshal wore one too. But the modern separator is a product of science and not a gift of Nature skillfully elaborated by the art of the barber. It costs a heap of money and it operates by machinery and no really stylish dairy farm is complete without it.