What we can we do to stem this dreadful tide of demoralization. We have never set our hearts upon taking the first prize at any fair for anything. We do not count upon deriving great pecuniary strength from contact with our mother Earth. But upon this one thing we have determined,—that every creature on our plantation, which is allowed to live at all, shall live as far as possible in the enjoyment of every bounty which Nature bestowed upon him. No dumb life shall be the worse for falling into our hands. We do not disdain to study the nature of our calves, nor to gratify their innocent whims. One refuses milk and chooses water: water is always provided. Another exults in apples, bread, and fried potatoes, and eats them from your hand with most winsome confidence and gratitude. They dislike the confinement of their parade-ground, yearning to roam over the grassy knolls, to snuff the scent of the clover-blossoms, to drink the dew from buttercups, to lie on the velvet turf and let the summer soak through their tough hides and penetrate their inmost hearts. How calm then are their beautiful mazarine blue eyes! What deep content relaxes every fibre of their breathing bodies! How happily the days of Thalaba go by! They seem to have attained to a premature tranquillity, the meditative mood of full-grown kine. But if sometimes the morning wine of June leaps through their veins with a strange vigor in its pulse, you shall see how bravely their latent youthfulness asserts itself. Frisking with many an ungainly gambol, they dash across the orchard, bending their backs into an angle, brandishing their tails aloft, jerking, butting, pushing, and jostling each other, in joy too intense for expression.
Driving in Natick one day, I observed, in some of the pleasant grounds which ornament that town, a very nice little contrivance;—a coil of fence you might call it, made of iron wire, capable of being rolled and unrolled, and so enabling you to make an inclosure when and where you chose. Set your fence down on one part of the lawn, turn in your lambs, and when they have cropped all the grass, remove the establishment to another place. I represented very ably and vividly to—the person mentioned before—the advantages of such a fence to our calves and to ourselves. It gives them at once the freedom of the turf, yet does not loose them beyond our control. And then it looks so picturesque!
"Yes," said he, briskly, "we must have one."
"That we must!" I responded with enthusiasm, delighted at his ready acquiescence. Not that a non-acquiescence would have made any difference in the result, but the process would have been more tedious.
The next morning he called me out, with great flourish of trumpets, to see The Iron Fence.
"It is not possible," I said, in astonishment. "You have had no time to send."
"No,—I made it," he replied boldly.
"You!" I exclaimed, still more astonished. "I knew there was a tangle of iron wire in the barn, but it looked rusty."
He made no reply, only whistled me on as if I were his dog,—he often does that,—and I followed, musing. The iron fences that I had seen showed a fine tracery, delicate and graceful, seemingly, as the cobwebs on the morning grass: could they, like these, be woven in a single summer night? The sequel will show. I appeared upon the scene. A single, slender iron pole was driven into the ground: one end of a piece of rope was fastened to it; the other end encircled the neck of our little, black, woolly calf, Topsy, who was describing great circles around the pole, in her frenzy to escape.
"Sir," said I, after a somewhat prolonged silence, "it is the old crowbar."