Nothing so Silly as a Goose 89 



the power of driving all thoughts of slumber from 

 his universe. Lobo got his early, I mine later 

 when it was borne in upon me that in the mind of 

 at least one Goose there was only one man in 

 the Universe and I was it. Every day she came 

 to the hotel office door for the one man to feed 

 her corn, other humans showered her with it but 

 they might as well have thrown gravel stones. 

 She did not run, she simply walked away, leaving 

 every kernel. On moon-light nights, I often en- 

 tertained a little audience by calling her in from 

 a few rods out in the lake she never went ten 

 rods from home and throwing corn into the 

 water where she would dive for each individual 

 kernel. Queer, isn't it, that whereas she could 

 scarcely have tasted corn before her capture, she 

 should have become so much more fond of it 

 than Bildad and his Goose of a wife. It is some- 

 times arrogantly asserted that domesticated crea- 

 tures have acquired at least a part of their wis- 

 dom from contact with man, while quite the 

 reverse is true. Bildad was the heir of all the 

 ages of domesticated Goosedom; Canada, direct 

 from the wild, had forgotten a thousand times 

 more than he ever knew. Comparing the two, 

 Canada was a gentleman and a scholar; Bildad, 

 a loafer and a grown-up gosling. One was an 

 astronomer, a World Voyager; the other, a rich 

 collection of untried-out Goose oil. How Canada 



