A VETERINARY POTPOURRI.* 
By S. R. Howard, Hillsboro, O. 
“ Aye free, off-hand, your story tell 
When wi’ a bosom crony, 
But still keep something to oursel’ 
Ye scarcely tell to ony.” 
Yes, yes, I am still in the same darned, old veterinary pro¬ 
fession, and, although I know I am not as thoroughly informed 
along certain lines as I am wont, still I am what might be called 
an every-day country veterinarian. Therefore, I speak not as 
the scribes, but as one having authority. 
I may not have accomplished much. I do not claim to have 
accomplished much, yet it is something to have made a living 
out of the art for 25 years, and I do claim to have done this in 
spite of difficulties, obstacles and cut-throat competition that 
some would not have endured. But such experiences are what 
makes us optimists. 
The district in which T live is rolling and none too fertile, 
and to tell how little I have sometimes earned during periods of 
poor crops and financial distrust would challenge credulity. 
Still I am at the same old stand and thank the Lord I am still 
paying one hundred cents on the dollar, all of which means that 
I may be called an also ran,*’ but I have never been left at the 
post. 
T have often thought of a friend of mine who said he had 
nothing when he commenced practice thirty years before, and he 
was still “ holding his own.” 
I have always been my own office boy, done my own stable 
work, and do yet, attending my horses and cow and am almost 
and altogether somewhat poky and old fashioned. (Hence the 
* Presented before the Ohio State Veterinary Medical Association. 
324 
