244 CATTLE-BREEDING. 



Our experience is of very little value if it is 

 based on a series of judgments upon all the 

 exceptional occurrences of a life-time. It may 

 be very prosaic to talk of the thousand and one 

 affairs of every-day life which are happening 

 under everybody else's eyes as well as our own; 

 it may be very prosaic, but what does it matter 

 if it is? I am not engaged in writing a novel, 

 but a practical book for practical men. It is a 

 very prosaic thing, this raising of cattle, some 

 men think, though Joaquin Miller has struck 

 a truer key in his verse, which I heartily ap- 

 plaud, when he says: 



"And I have said, and I say it ever, 

 As the years go on, and the world goes over, 

 'Twere better to be content and clever 

 In tending of cattle and tossing of clover, 

 In the grazing of cattle and the growing of grain, 

 Than a strong man striving for fame and gain." 



But despite the poet it is a prosaic thing to 

 feed and bed down and milk and care for a lot 

 of cows year in and year out; to have them 

 fall sick always of the same old troubles; to 

 have .them grow old and die; life itself is pro- 

 saic. But also, as a true poet has said, "life is 

 real, life is earnest." 



"Not enjoyment, and not sorrow, 



Is our destined end or way; 

 But to act, that each tomorrow 

 Finds us farther than today." 



And I am sure that earnest men do not 

 want fancy theories; they "want thought, true 



