In Pastures Green

by Peter McArthur

But gates are not the only things that inspire cows. Doors also seem to have a very stimulating effect on their cerebral processes. Sometimes when I turn the cows out to water I just go down the line unloosing their chains. When the first cow reaches the door and gets a glimpse of the fair round world she stops to reflect on its beauty. The cows behind her, lacking this inspiration, begin to hook and bunt one another until the stable is a howling pandemonium, but the cow in the door is in no wise disturbed. She stands there and thinks, and thinks, and thinks. As for me, well—perhaps I hadn't better tell what I am thinking and saying. As a rule, before I am too severely trampled I manage to get hold of a fork and break the reverie of the thinker in the doorway. In my opinion Rodin missed a great opportunity when sculptoring "The Thinker." He should have hewn a cow out of marble rather than a man who looks like G. Bernard Shaw. When it comes to real thinking, give me a cow. I suspect that she gets as far with her problems as the best thinker of us all.

Now that I think of it, there is another cow problem that I should like to have solved. Does any man of wide experience know how to drive half-a-dozen cows across a ten-acre field without zigzagging back and forward until he has travelled about ten miles? Sometimes in the summer when I went to milk I would find that the cows were standing in the farthest corner of the field licking one another's ears and having a nice, quiet sociable time together. They would pay no attention to my alluring calls of "Co-Boss," and in the end I would have to hang the pails on the gate and go after them. Though they would be nicely grouped before I disturbed them, they would promptly spread out like a fan, and I would have to run along behind them driving each cow a few rods and then rushing on to the next. And each cow after I left her would stop and look at me with mild, wondering eyes as if trying to figure out just what I was trying to do. None of them would move except when I was raging behind them, and each time they moved they would move farther apart. If any one knows a practical method of keeping cows bunched while being driven across a field I am open for instruction. Cows are certainly useful and indispensable animals, but there are times when they are trying, very trying.

Jan. 6.—Last night the conversation turned on summer wood and the need of providing a supply.

"Good!" exclaimed the deponent, bubbling over with fool enthusiasm. "I need exercise, and a session at the end of a crosscut saw would do me a world of good."

As a matter of fact, winter life in the country does get monotonous when one has nothing to do but drive to school with the children, go to the post office for the mail, read papers, crack nuts, and eat apples. The prospect of varying matters by a few days' work in the woods was positively alluring.

This morning conditions were ideal for outdoor work. The sun was shining, and a faint north wind was breathing over the snow. Bluejays were squawking in the orchard and crows cawing in the woods. The "eager and nipping air" seemed to put steam in every living thing that was about, and to go crunching through the drifts with an axe over one's shoulder seemed large and primitive and manly. In the woods flakes of snow were sifting down from the branches and faintly pungent woodland odours gave an exhilarating touch to the air.

A beech that had been felled for some purpose, but found unsatisfactory, was first attacked. It was held clear of the snow by a log on which it rested and by its branches. As the saw bit into it with a metallic "tang, tang," the prospects for a pleasant and profitable day were excellent. Yanking a saw across a sound piece of timber seemed more like fun than anything else, and as exercise it was not unlike rowing.

The first cut was all right and as the block fell into the snow the achievement was celebrated with a deep-lunged "Wheeee!" of satisfaction. When the second block fell the overcoat was felt to be an encumbrance and was removed.

"Tang, tang!" whimpered the saw through the hard wood. Two cuts more were completed and then the ordinary coat was felt to be rather heavy and was accordingly thrown off.

"Tang, tang!" The sound was getting monotonous and breathing was becoming noticeably difficult. What of that? Professor James of Harvard has written an authoritative essay on "Second Wind," in which he shows that if one keeps at it he will soon get his "second wind," and will be in a better condition for work than when he started. Nature has provided us with wonderful reserves of strength if we will but persist until they are reached. I was certainly in need of second wind, for the first was almost gone. I was distinctly puffing. Another cut and I was gasping. By the time another cut was finished I had developed "Charley horse," glass arm, lumbago, asthma, and symptoms of apoplexy. As for breathing I was simply biting at the air. Sweat was dripping from my eyebrows and the tip of my nose, and I was in the condition one reaches in the hot room of the Turkish bath, when the rubber comes in and remarks: "You are in a fine sweat. Better come and have a rub down." But there was no rub down. That wretched saw was pulled away from me as often as I pulled it across, and there was no music in its "tang, tan-n-ng!" Just as I was coming to the conclusion that the world was full of sawdust and that I hadn't a friend on earth, the tree was all cut into blocks.