OF THE OX. 135 



die, touched us deeply. We could not help 

 asking ourselves, how it was that man could 

 dispense with compassion and good feeling 

 even in that bloody toil, and why he did 

 not bandage the eyes of the doomed crea- 

 tures he was going to sacrifice ? These dumb 

 animals that we treat like inert matter are 

 sensitive like ourselves ; they are very con- 

 scious of pain ; and if it be our privilege to 

 compute the number of our days, we ought 

 not to forget that they are, like us, endowed 

 with intelligence, so that when they are thus 

 detained at the place of execution, all their 

 senses and faculties being concentrated on their 

 destroyer, they are fully conscious of the cruel 

 fate which awaits them. 



At last it was the poor beast's turn to be 

 slaughtered, and ten minutes afterwards we 

 opened her entrails, and had proof that Mr. 

 Tegg's judgment was exact, for already the 

 stomach and intestines offered to view indubit- 

 able signs of the typhus at its first period. 



The owner of the cow was then convinced 

 and brought to reason, but he still very fairly 

 asserted the goodness of his motives, about 

 which none present doubted at all, and applied 



