Child and Country: A Book of the Younger Generation

by Will Levington Comfort

13

NATURAL CRUELTY

In dealing with the young, especially with little boys, one of the first things to establish is gentleness to animals. Between the little boy and the grown man all the states of evolution are vaguely reviewed, as they are, in fact, in that more rapid and mysterious passage between conception and birth. Young nations pass through the same phases, and some of them are abominable. The sense of power is a dangerous thing. The child feels it in his hands, and the nation feels it in its first victory.... In the Chapel during a period of several days we talked about the wonder of animals (the little boys of the house present) and the results were so interesting that I put together some of the things discussed in the following form, calling the paper Adventures in Cruelty:

As a whole, the styles in cruelty are changing. Certain matters of charity as we used to regard them are vulgar now. I remember when a great sign, The Home of the Friendless, used to stare obscenely at thousands of city school children, as we passed daily through a certain street. Though it is gone now, something of the curse of it is still upon the premises. I always think of what a certain observer said:

"You would not think the Christ had ever come to a world, where men could give such a name to a house of love-babies."

I remember, too, when there formerly appeared from time to time on the streets, during the long summers, different green-blue wagons. The drivers were different, too—I recall one was a hunchback. These outfits formed one of the fascinating horrors of our bringing-up—the fork, the noose, the stray dog tossed into a maddened pulp of stray dogs, the door slammed, and no word at all from the driver—nothing we could build on, or learn his character by. He was a part of the law, and we were taught then that the law was everlastingly right, that we must grind our characters against it.... But the green-blue wagons are gone, and the Law has come to conform a bit with the character of youth.

The time is not long since when we met our adventures in cruelty alone—no concert of enlightened citizens on these subjects—and only the very few had found the flaw in the gospel that God had made the animals, and all the little animals, for delectation and service of man. Possibly there is a bit of galvanic life still in the teaching, but it cannot be said to belong to the New Age.

Economic efficiency has altered many styles for the better. Formerly western drovers used to drive their herds into the brush for the winters. The few that the winter and the wolves didn't get were supposed to be hardy enough to demand a price. It was found, however, that wintering-out cost the beasts more in vitality than they would spend in seven years of labour; that the result was decrepit colts and stringy dwarfs for the beef market. Also there was agitation on the subject, and the custom passed. City men who owned horses in large numbers found their efficiency brought to a higher notch at the sacrifice of a little more air and food, warmth and rest. There is a far-drive to this appeal, and there are those who believe that it will see us through to the millennium.

A woman told this story: "When I was a child in the country there was an old cow that we all knew and loved. She was red and white like Stevenson's cow that ate the meadow flowers. Her name was Mary—Mr. Devlin's Mary. The Devlin children played with us, and they were like other children in every way, only a little fatter and ruddier perhaps. The calves disappeared annually (one of the mysteries) and the Devlin children were brought up on Mary's milk. It wasn't milk, they said, but pure cream. We came to know Mary, because she was always on the roadside—no remote back-pastures for her. She loved the children and had to know what passed. We used to deck her with dandelions, and often just as we were getting the last circlet fastened, old Mary would tire of the game and walk sedately out of the ring—just as she would when a baby calf had enough or some novice had been milking too long. I have been able to understand how much the Hindus think of their cattle just by thinking of Mary. For years we passed her—to and from school. It was said that she could negotiate any gate or lock.

"Well, on one Spring morning, as we walked by the Devlin house, we saw a crated wagon with a new calf inside, and they were tying Mary behind. She was led forth. I remember the whites of her eyes and her twisted head. Only that, in a kind of sickening and pervading blackness. The calf cried to her, and Mary answered, and thus they passed.... 'But she is old. She dried up for a time last summer,' one of the Devlin children said.