OUR RURAL DIVINITY 135 
Thus ended my second venture in live stock. My 
third, which followed sharp upon the heels of this 
disaster, was scarcely more of a success. This time 
I led to the altar a buffalo cow, as they call the 
““muley ” down South,—a large, spotted, creamy- 
skinned cow, with a fine udder, that I persuaded a 
Jew drover to part with for ninety dollars, ‘“‘ Pag 
like a dish rack (rag),” said he, pointing to her 
udder after she had been milked. ‘You vill come 
pack and gif me the udder ten tollar” (for he had 
demanded an even hundred), he continued, “after 
you have had her a gouple of days.” ‘True, I felt 
like returning to him after a “gouple of days,” but 
not to pay the other ten dollars. The cow proved 
to be as blind as a bat, though capable of counter- 
feiting the act of seeing to perfection. For did she 
not lift up her head and follow with her eyes a dog 
that scaled the fence and ran through the other end 
of the lot, and the next moment dash my hopes thus 
raised by trying to walk over a locust-tree thirty 
feet high? And when I set the bucket before her 
containing her first mess of meal, she missed it by 
several inches, and her nose brought up against the 
ground, Was it a kind of far-sightedness and near 
blindness? That was it, I think; she had genius, 
but not talent; she could see the man in the moon, 
but was quite oblivious to the man immediately in 
her front. Her eyes were telescopic and required a 
long range. 
As long as I kept her in the stall, or confined to 
the inclosure, this strange eclipse of her sight was 
