Getting Acquainted 249 



er than among the last flock of sheep which I sold 

 twenty years ago and some of whose faces I still 

 remember. Those I remember best had names 

 and nick names; their faces are unforgettable. 

 Beginning with the first colt I owned, when I was 

 fourteen years of age, I can give not only his 

 name and color, but his minute history his per- 

 sonality and that is equally true of at least a 

 hundred and ninety successors to skittish, panicky 

 Cruser. 



Now I suppose that it would be possible to find 

 at the stock yards in Chicago, individuals who 

 have bought and sold millions of sheep, who have 

 utterly failed to learn as much of the animal 

 as an animal from their millions, as I learned 

 from my individual cosset lamb. 



I know a man who, in the last forty years, has 

 approximately prepared and mounted the skins 

 of ten thousand birds, but, while thus in close 

 contact with birds, so far as really learning any- 

 thing of the real life of the creature he handled, 

 its possibilities and limitations, its good and evil, 

 its individuality and personality; he might as well 

 have spent his time sawing wood. Indeed, I think 

 that the more a man knows of the inside of a bird, 

 the less he knows about the outside; the more he 

 knows of a bird scientifically, the less he is apt to 

 know about the creature's aesthetic, spiritual, com- 

 panionable worth. 



