Then follow days of unremitting toil, not unmixed with anxiety and cruel disappointments. Tragedies come which spoil a day for us, but it is part of the game, part of the great game we are trying to learn to play with poise and patience.
I sit on the paddock fence and smoke my pipe. I watch the sun sink low behind the woodland to the west. Up from the ploughed land comes the Field Marshal with his host. When I first see him he has them in extended order; as he comes to more difficult terrain, he skillfully manœuvres them into a column of fours and passes me in perfect array. I drop to my feet and come to a rigid salute. He passes the reviewing stand with glittering eye and haughty step. I notice that on the return into familiar country he is at the head of the column. And what a picture he makes! Here is a bird, methinks, who never has had and never will have an “inferiority complex.” And, after all, he is acting his little part well. What more can man or bird do? Play your part in the drama—and what a drama it is!
Lights glimmer in the little house. I must go. I thrust my pipe deep into my pocket without knocking the heel out—a habit I practise, but deplore; it has grown on me of late years. I walk toward the house. At the lilacs by the hedge I stop.
The soft air is full of myriads of little voices; small rustling things disturb the grass; the soft sod yields beneath my step, and pungent odors float down the wind. Life, imperious life is singing in the night its message of growth. Grow and multiply, grow, grow for to-morrow the harvest. And the very stars in the heavens swing low to listen.
A shrill cry of distress reaches my dreaming ears. I start, but I know from whence it comes. It is Mrs. Cuttle, late as usual, blundering homeward in the dark.
BLESSED BE THE COW
BLESSED BE THE COW