VI 
OUR RURAL DIVINITY 
| WONDER that Wilson Flagg did not include 
the cow among his “ Picturesque Animals,” for 
that is where she belongs. She has not the classic 
beauty of the horse, but in picture-making qualities 
she is far ahead of him. Her shaggy, loose-jointed 
body; her irregular, sketchy outlines, like those of 
the landscape,— the hollows and ridges, the slopes 
and prominences; her tossing horns, her bushy tail, 
her swinging gait, her tranquil, ruminating habits, 
—dall tend to make her an object upon which the 
artist eye loves to dwell. The artists are forever 
putting her into pictures, too. In rural landscape 
scenes she is an important feature. Behold her 
grazing in the pastures and on the hillsides, or along 
banks of streams, or ruminating under wide-spread- 
ing trees, or standing belly-deep in the creek or 
pond, or lying upon the smooth places in the quiet 
summer afternoon, the day’s grazing done, and wait- 
ing to be summoned home to be milked; and again 
in the twilight lying upon the level summit of the 
hill, or where the sward is thickest and softest; or 
in winter a herd of them filing along toward the 
spring to drink, or being “‘foddered ” from the stack 
