Speaking of the chickens, I have seen them trailing their wings through the hot dust, day in and day out, peering everywhere with their anxious little eyes for one drop of water.
On that farm there was only a well, and the water was drawn by means of a pole with a hook on the end of it. It was pretty slow, hard work, so that no animal got all the water it really needed at any time; besides we are just like "other folks," we need to have water where we can drink if we are thirsty, not be obliged to gulp down a lot when we don't want it, simply because we know it is all we will get for hours. Men feed us things that burn and irritate our stomachs just as salt fish does theirs. They drink when they are thirsty if that is every few minutes, but with an equal longing for water we must wait their convenience, if that is all day.
We are ofttimes sick and feverish, too, just the same as people, but we can't speak, and so we must endure the torture, after being driven furiously through the dust and under a pelting sun.
It is terrible to suffer from a burning thirst, but no worse for a man than for a horse, and no worse for a horse than for a canary bird. We do not suffer always in proportion to our avoirdupois or mental caliber.
Mrs. Stringer was in the habit of shutting hens up, who differed with her on the subject of sitting, in boxes or barrels without food or water, and a good many times she was surprised, after leaving them there three or more days, to find them dead. A terrible death to die, to all but literally burn up with "setting-fever," inward thirst and lack of fresh air.
If I were a man what I am going to say now would be wicked, but I am only a horse. Well, I have often thought that a place I hear men around livery barns speak of, said to be heated by fire and brimstone, will like as not receive many recruits from among ministers and deacons who have neglected to water and shelter their horses and stock here, and among the so-called Christian women who let their chickens, especially setting hens, die of thirst.
People who are so stingy of God's cold water here will know what thirst means in eternity, or I am mistaken. And the hogs on that farm—how they beg (squeal) for something cool and clean to drink.
Somebody, who thinks just as the Stringers did, laughs at the idea of a hog wanting a clear, cool drink. More is the pity! Why, time and again have the poor swine told me that they only drink swill and such stuff because nobody ever offered them anything better. They don't mind having decent swill used to mix their messes with, but they can appreciate a clean drink as well as a man can. I get out of patience, too, hearing so much about the "dirty hog," when the poor creature would be clean if he had half a chance. Of course, his ideas of cleanliness differ from a dainty maiden's; he enjoys a mud bath, but he will always take clean mud if he can find it, and he doesn't enjoy wading around in a filthy pen more than you or I would. Is there anything cleaner or prettier than a young pig? Take one and give it decent care and surroundings and it will never disgust you with its filth. The majority of swine are fed on rotten, putrid things, simply because they are swine.
One blessing, the careless owner of either hog or fowl, who allows it to eat that which is unclean, will get it all back second-hand if he eats the creature.
There were not less than a dozen calves in a barren lot on this place, and I used to actually dread my day out there, because of the ceaseless bellowing for water kept up by the helpless creatures.