NOTES FROM THE PRAIRIE 97 



making a wry face. He cannot be induced to touch 

 it a second time. 



"I have taught him to think I am afraid of him, 

 and how he tyrannizes over me, chasing me from 

 place to place, pecking and squeaking! He delights 

 in pulling out my hair. When knitting or crochet- 

 ing, he tries to prevent my pulling the yarn by stand- 

 ing on it; when that fails, he takes hold with his 

 bill and pulls with all his little might." 



Some persons have a special gift or quality that 

 enables them to sustain more intimate relations with 

 wild creatures than others. Women, as a rule, are 

 ridiculously afraid of cattle and horses turned loose 

 in a field, but my correspondent, when a young girl, 

 had many a lark with the prairie colts. "Is it not 

 strange," she says, "that a horse will rarely hurt a 

 child, or any person that is fond of them ? To see 

 a drove of a hundred or even a hundred and fifty 

 unbroken colts branded and turned out to grow up 

 was a common occurrence then [in her childhood]. 

 I could go among them, catch them, climb on their 

 backs, and they never offered to hurt me; they 

 seemed to consider it fun. They would come up 

 and touch me with their noses, and prance off around 

 and around me; but just let a man come near them, 

 and they were off like the wind." 



All her reminiscences of her early life in Iowa, 

 thirty years ago, are deeply interesting to me. Her 

 parents, a Boston family, moved to that part of the 

 State in advance of the railroads, making the jour- 

 uey from the Mississippi in a wagon. "My father 



