110 THE HAMILTON ASSOCIATION. 
those well-groomed congeners (rarely out of the range of the cattle 
byre, or the smell of the hay manger) ever give evidence of. 
Those farm animals most servicable in harness, as in plow or 
other team work, are often characterized by sound digestion, vigor 
of constitution, and are in fact sometimes too enterprising, and when 
liberated in the pastures outwit their owner by disregard of fence 
boundaries and unlimited self-help in indulgence of luxurious tastes, 
amid oatfield preserves or the stores of blossoming clover. 
Farmers have frequently been heard to remark: ‘‘ My Nimrod’s 
super-excellent qualities, I regret to have to tell, are nearly counter- 
balanced by his incurable breachiness;” or, “he is an invaluable 
treasure on farm or road, but a piratical brute when out of harness, 
and I believe that if he wished to sample a bit of choice pasture he 
would jump a stake and ridered barn.” 
Probably one might sum up that the mystic superstructure 
(a sort of metaphysical germ, capable of almost illimitable develop- 
ment), exists at the fount of life, and is shown in the life doings and 
possibilities in beast, bird and insect. The horse tamer, Rarey, had 
among men one of the clearest conceptions of that truth. But we 
assert that all the domestic animals are easily seen to exemplify the 
assumption of truism: when the spirit is evoked in farm animals 
one has heard the trait alluded to as Satanic, demoniac, and is often 
at its climax in the fox or the crow among birds, or the jay genus, 
but it has been known to arrive at considerable maturity in the 
sheep, as well as very frequently in porcines, and perhaps being 
more under the notice of the average man in equines. 
A pair of blue-jays were once made pets of here, and their 
behaviour was a surprise to numberless beholders, so much so that 
a spectator bought a pair of just fledged jays, but after some months 
of their cage-life, turned the birds out in disappointment and 
vexation as nasty, squalling, gormandizing brutes. Said a critic to 
the jay cage owner, ‘‘Oh, what could you expect, when you know 
that you never took any trouble to draw them out.” 
