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south to welcome the Yirginian settlers. Ills earliest immigraut 

 ancestors possibly came in the Mayflower, but more probably took 

 stowaway passage some time later in the tail of some dog or sheep 

 brouo-ht from across the sea. However he came, he is here, , 

 numerous and widespread as you know him, and he is still travelling, 

 the veriest tramp of the roadside, stealing rides and pressing ever 

 onward toward the west, following the trail of man and his domesti- 

 cated animals. 



PAET II. THE RED COW AXD THE MAPLE TREE. 



BY JOHN W. SPENCER. 



The day was so warm as to suggest an oven. The rays of the sun 

 came the most direct way — as a boy would make a bee-line cross- 

 lots. A blue haze hung about the heavens, dimming the sun at 

 midday and at sunrise and at sunset, making it look like an immense 

 orange, and the heated ah* shimmered across the level pasture. It 

 was one of those days that warps the slivers in the plank walk and 

 makes prickly the path of the barefooted boy — a day when most 

 boys want to go to the swimming hole at the bend of the creek under 

 the leaning beech. 



On a gravelly knoll a slick red cow stood in the dark thick shade 

 of a maple tree. A colony of persistent flies was clinging to her 

 shoulder and scattering ones flew about her ears, and others would 

 have found a resting place on her hips and back but for the incessant 

 switching of her tail. With all the persistent switching, the cow, 

 with half closed eyes, chewed her cud with the regularity of the 

 swinging of a pendulum. 



Said the Red Cow to the Maple Tree, " You have no troubles 

 such as I have. See how I am pestered with flies every hour of the 

 day. Flies do not trouble you." 



Said the Maple Tree to the Red Cow, '' It is fortunate they do 

 not for I have no tail with which to switch them." 



Said the Red Cow to the Maple Tree, " I am very thirsty and I 

 shall not find a refreshing drink until, while on my way to the barn 

 to be milked this evening, I shall wade through the brook." 



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