CHAPTER VIII. 

 CALVES AND STATESMEN 



IN November 1912, in London, called upon to 

 defend civil war for constitutional policy, I found 

 the task too much for me, and left for Mayo, giving 

 up the company of statesmen for the company of 

 calves ; and after some observant reflection, what 

 struck me most was the intellectual gain of the 

 change. I began by spending half an hour among 

 the calves every morning, and the innocent 

 expression of their big, ingenuous eyes made me 

 a better man for the rest of the day. Besides, they 

 invariably responded in gratitude and in profit to 

 every expenditure in material and attention, 

 which seemed to raise them so high morally above 

 my experience of statesmen. The man who 

 starves a calf to steal the food ought to get penal 

 servitude. He is almost as bad as a party 

 politician. 



There was another reason for returning to Mayo 

 just then. I knew that I had been steadily robbed 

 at home during my two years in London. I had 

 left directions to feed a calf for every four quarts 

 of milk per day in the milking season, and at that 

 rate, I ought to have fifteen to twenty good calvei 

 for the year, instead of which I found four bad 

 ones, starved, dirty and verminous. During those 



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