How hardy are cows that lie in the fog chewing the cud all night! They wake up with no stiffness in their limbs. They are indifferent to fogs as frogs to water; like hippopotami, fitted are they to dwell ever on the river bank of this world, fitted to meadows and their vicissitudes. I see where, in pastures of short, firm turf, they have pulled up the grass by the roots, and it lies scattered in small tufts. To anticipate a little, when I return this way I find two farmers loading their cart with dirt, and they are so unmanly as to excuse themselves to me for working this Sunday morning by saying with a serious face that they are burying a cow which died last night after some months of sickness, - which, however, they unthinkingly admit that they killed last night, being the most convenient time for them, and I see that they are now putting more loads of soil over her body to save the manure. How often men will betray their sense of guilt, and hence their actual guilt, by their excuses, where no guilt necessarily was. I remarked that it must be cold for a cow lying in such fogs all night, but one answered, properly, “Well, I don’t know how it may be with a sick cow, but it won’t hurt a well critter any.”
