HISTORY OF HEREFORD CATTLE 



203 



description through Mr. Stevens' letter to the 

 "Cultivator" at the time of their arrival here. 

 The Noble Duke of Cambridge was taken to the 

 herd of Col. Sherwood of Auburn, and the own- 

 er charged him a very high price for half of 

 him. Subsequently Stevens wrote asking Mr. 

 Bates to state in a letter to him that he (Stev- 

 ens) had given Bates an enormous price, nam- 

 ing the. sum. At this Mr. Bates became indig- 

 nant; he felt that a secret gift for puffing was 

 not so profitable to him as represented, conse- 

 quently wrote Stevens in gentle language that 

 he was sorry to find he (Stevens) was somewhat 

 the reverse of a "great I am ;" told his house- 

 keeper if he ever came to his house again to 

 forbid his crossing the threshold. I refer your 

 readers to "Bell on Bates" to corroborate these 

 facts. 



Xow comes the third chap in the Bates mania 

 who, in his vanity, supposed himself to be the 

 head of all, having been selected by James 0. 

 Sheldon of Geneva, N. Y., to take a portion 

 of his Bates tribe to England. This gentleman, 

 being so elated with his flattering pictures in 

 catalogues and Herd Books, placed Page on 

 equal terms with the other great "I am," and 

 at that time the Bates mania was at its 

 zenith. Page was so fortunate in his pretense^ 

 of the knowledge of pedigree, fancy, fashion, 

 upstanding style, thin hides, beautiful, soft 

 touch, sweet heads, high hips, extended paunch 

 and grand thighs, so peculiarly essential to 

 denote the Bates tribe, that he had precisely 

 what these fanciful, fashionable supporters of 

 Bates wanted on the other side of that "big 

 pond." The only thing against his personal 

 appearance was his natural swagger, for which 

 he had no checkrein. He caught the rich com- 

 moner and dipped a little into the nobility, who 

 were at that period anxiously striving to gull 

 each other at every sale, to find out which could 

 build the most expensive castle in the air, conse- 

 quently Page returned home highly elated. 



I do not describe this trio with the idea of 

 injuring them or the Shorthorns ; far from it : 

 but I do say that it was this kind of men that 

 did that cause more injury than any other class ; 

 their tongues and their pens were "too fast" 

 for their brains, and this short sketch will plain- 

 ly show how the Bates mania was created, and 

 I challenge any man to deny with truth the 

 facts as I have stated them. I have no malice 

 against this trio, but I had pity for them in 

 their weakness, which I always predicted would 

 end in the disappointment it did. This trio was 

 quite successful with fancy and fashionable 

 men, their smooth tongues, in the plenitude of 

 their politeness made excessive flattery plaus- 



ible to them, but when they met together to 

 flatter each other upon the glorious impression 

 they were making upon the Bates mania, Satan 

 stepped out without interfering. 



Bates, with all his faults, showed much cun- 

 ning. When Mr. Price challenged to show 

 twenty Hereford breeding cows and a bull for 

 100 against any breeder or breed in Great 

 Britain, no man ever showed greater weakness 

 in judgment than Mr. Bates when he accepted 

 it. He felt that he should be sure to be beaten 

 unless the judges were favorable toward him, 

 and he would only have the choice of one of 

 them. Influenced by this conviction, after de- 

 positing the forfeit, he began to realize his crit- 

 ical situation, fully aware that if he did not ac- 

 cept that the horns of his cattle must be drawn 

 in much shorter. 



JOHN GOSLING, KANSAS CITY, MO. 

 (America's greatest expert judge.) 



Alarmed at his situation, Mr. Bates sent his 

 confidential man Friday disguised in his smock 

 frock on Sunday, while Mr. Price was in church, 

 to examine the cattle he had to contend with. 

 Friday went into the stable under the pretense 

 that he wanted to hire to Mr. Price as a stock- 

 man. After looking them through he left, with- 

 out leaving his name. Soon after Friday re- 

 turned home Mr. Bates became exceedingly ner- 

 vous; raised the most frivolous quibbles and 

 excuses amongst his neighbors and friends; his 



