THE NEGKO AND THE MERINO BUCK. 149 



the conviction forced upon his mind that the owl had a 

 swivel in its neck." 



" Strange," remarked Spalding, " how the hearing of one 

 story reminds us of another. I always admired the ' Arabian 

 Nights/ because the stories contained in that work hang 

 together so like a string of onions, or a braid of seed corn. 

 The first is a sort of introduction to the second, and the 

 second an usher to the third, and so on through the whole. 

 But why the story of the Dutchman and the owl should 

 remind me of another, in which an old negro and a bellicose 

 ram were the actors, is a matter I do not pretend to under- 

 stand, unless it be the extreme absurdity of both. A gen- 

 tleman of my acquaintance long ago (he was a middle-aged 

 man when I was a small boy. He was an upright and a 

 good man. He has gone to his rest, and sleeps in an honored 

 grave, having upon the simple stone above him no lying 

 epitaph), had an old negro who rejoiced in the name of 

 Pompey, and a Merino buck, the latter a valiant animal, 

 that was ready to fight with anybody, or anything, that 

 crossed his path. Between him and the ' colored person/ 

 was an 'eternal distinction/ an active and irreconcilable 

 antagonism, that developed itself on every possible occasion. 

 The old Guinea man was winnowing wheat one day, with an 

 old-fashioned fan (did any of you ever see one of these prim- 

 itive machines for separating wheat from the chaff, used 

 by our fathers before the fanning mill was invented ? It 

 was an ingenious contrivance, by which a man with a strong 



