Read Ebook: Harper's Round Table January 5 1897 by Various

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Ebook has 553 lines and 33440 words, and 12 pages

"Well, you air a coward! How many times? Speak up now."

More digging of the bare toes in the earth, and one premonitory tear stealing from under the downcast lids, then:

"A little most every day, and you can keep the cow," wailed the Bishop, as he turned abruptly and fled behind the barn, where he flung himself into the green depths of a tansy bed, and gave himself up to unmanly tears.

I had heard more than I wished, for I had been rooted to the spot, not so much because of my interest in Phil as that I did not like to vex Uncle Abner by making him aware of my unintentional presence. I did not dare seek and comfort my Little Bishop sobbing in the tansy bed, the brand of coward on his forehead, and, what was much worse, the fear in his heart that he deserved it. I hurried home across the fields, quite forgetting my errand, and told Aunt Betty, with tears in my eyes, that I would rather eat buttermilk bread for a week than have one of Uncle Abner's yeast-cakes in the house. I acknowledged that he had been true to his word and had held to his bargain, but I could not forgive his making so hard a bargain with my timid Little Bishop.

Aunt Betty finally heard from Mrs. Sanderson, through whom all information was sure to filter if you gave it time, that Uncle Abner despised a coward, that he considered Phil a regular mother's-apron-string boy, and that he was "learnin'" him to be brave.

Bill Jones, the hired man, now drove Buttercup to pasture, though whenever Uncle Abner went to Moderation of Bonnie Eagle, as he often did, I noticed that Phil took the hired man's place. I often joined him on these anxious expeditions, and a like terror in both our souls, we attempted to train the red cow and give her some idea of obedience.

"If she only wouldn't look at us that way we would get along real nicely with her, wouldn't we?" prattled the dear Bishop, straggling along by my side; "and she is a splendid cow; she gives twenty-one quarts a day, and Uncle Abner says it's more'n half cream."

I assented in all this, thinking that if Buttercup would give up her habit of turning completely round in the road to roll her eyes and elevate her white-tipped eyebrow, she might indeed be an enjoyable companion; but in her present state of development her society would not be agreeable to me even did she give sixty-one quarts of milk a day. Furthermore, when I found that she never did any of these reprehensible things with Bill Jones, I began to believe cows more intelligent creatures than I had supposed them to be, and I was indignant to think Buttercup could count so confidently on our weakness.

One evening, when she was more than usually exasperating, I said to the Bishop, who was bracing himself to keep from being pulled into a way-side brook where she loved to dabble, "Bishop, do you know anything about the superiority of mind over matter?" No, he didn't, though it was not a fair time to ask the question, for he had sat down in the road to get a better purchase on the rope.

"Well, it doesn't signify. What I mean is that we can die but once, and it is a glorious thing to die for a great principle. Give me that rope. I can pull like an ox in my present frame of mind. You run down on the opposite side of the brook, take that big stick, wade right in--you are barefooted--brandish the stick, and, if necessary, do more than brandish. I would go myself, but it is better she should recognize you as a master, and I am in as much danger as you are, anyway. She may try to hook you, of course, but you must keep waving the stick--die brandishing, Bishop, that's the idea! She may turn and run for me, in which case I shall run too; but I shall die running, and Aunt Betty can bury us under our favorite sweet-apple-tree!"

The Bishop's soul was fired by my eloquence. The blood mounted to our brains simultaneously, and we were flushed with a splendid courage in which death looked a mean and paltry thing compared with vanquishing that cow. She had already stepped into the pool, but the Bishop waded in towards her, moving the alder branch menacingly. She looked up with the familiar roll of the eye that had done her such good service all summer, but she quailed beneath the stern justice of the Bishop's gaze.

In that moment she felt ashamed, I know, of the misery she had caused that helpless mite. At any rate, actuated by fear, surprise, or remorse, she turned and walked back into the road without a sign of passion or indignation, leaving us rather disappointed at our easy victory. To be prepared for a violent death and receive not even a scratch makes one fear that one may possibly have overestimated the danger.

Well, we were better friends after that, all three of us, and understood one another better as the summer grew into autumn and the great maple hung a flaming bough of scarlet over the hammock. Uncle Abner found the Bishop very useful at picking up potatoes and gathering apples, but he was going to leave Pleasant River as soon as the harvesting was over.

One warm evening Aunt Betty and I were borrowing half a yeast-cake, and incidentally sitting on Mrs. Sanderson's steps at sunset. Buttercup was being milked on the grassy slope near the shed door. As she walked to the barn, after giving up her twelve quarts of yellow milk, she bent her neck and snatched a hasty bite from a pile of turnips lying temptingly near. In her haste she got more of a mouthful than would be considered good manners even among cows, and as she disappeared in the barn door I could see a forest of green tops hanging from her mouth, while she painfully attempted to grind up the mass of stolen material without allowing a single turnip to escape.

It grew dark soon after, and we went into the house, but as we closed the door I heard the cow coughing, and said to Mrs. Sanderson, "Buttercup was too greedy, and now she has indigestion."

The Bishop always went to bed at sundown, and Uncle Abner had gone to the doctor's to have his hand dressed, for he had hurt it in some way in the threshing-machine. Bill Jones came in presently and asked for him, saying that the cow coughed more and more, and it must be that something was wrong, but he could not get her to open her mouth wide enough for him to see anything.

When Uncle Abner had driven into the yard, he came in for a lantern, and went directly out to the barn. After an hour or more, in which we had forgotten the whole occurrence, he came in again. "I'm blamed if we ain't goin' to lose that cow," he said. "Come out, will ye, Hannah, and hold the lantern? I can't do anything with my right hand in a sling, and Bill is the stupidest critter in the country."

We all went out to the barn except Aunt Betty, who ran down the path to see if her son Moses had come home from Saco, and could come up to take a hand in the exercises.

Buttercup was in a bad way; there was no doubt of it. Something, one of the turnips, presumably, had lodged in her throat, and would move neither way, despite her attempts to dislodge it. Her breathing was labored, and her eyes bloodshot from straining and choking. Once or twice they succeeded in getting her mouth partly open, but before they could fairly discover the cause of trouble she had wrested her head away.

"I can see a little tuft of green sticking straight up in the middle," said Uncle Abner, while Bill Jones and Moses held a lantern on each side of Buttercup's head; "but, land! it's so far down, and such a mite of a thing, I couldn't git it even if I could use my right hand. S'pose you try, Bill."

Bill hemmed and hawed, and confessed he didn't care to try. Buttercup's teeth were of good size and excellent quality, and he had no fancy for leaving his hand within her jaws. He said he was no good at that kind of work, but that he would help Uncle Abner hold the cow's head; that was just as necessary, and considerable safer.

Moses was more inclined to the service of humanity, and did his best, wrapping his wrist in a cloth, and making desperate but ineffectual dabs at the slippery green turnip-tops in the reluctantly opened throat. But the cow tossed her head and stamped her feet and switched her tail and wriggled from under Bill's hands, so that it seemed altogether impossible to reach the seat of the trouble.

Uncle Abner was in despair, fuming and fretting the more because of his own uselessness. "Hitch up, Bill," he said, "and, Hannah, you drive over to Edgewood for the horse-doctor. I know we can get out that turnip if we can hit on the right tools and somebody to manage 'em right; but we've got to be quick about it or the critter'll choke to death, sure! Your hand's so clumsy, Mose, she thinks her time's come when she feels it in her mouth, and your fingers are so big you can't ketch holt o' that green stuff 'thout its slippin'!"

"Mine's little; let me try," said a timid voice, and turning round, we saw the Bishop, his trousers pulled on over his night-shirt, his curly hair ruffled, his eyes big with sleep.

Uncle Abner gave a laugh of good-humored derision. "You--that's afraid to drive a cow to pasture? No, sir; you hain't got sand enough for this job, I guess!"

Buttercup just then gave a worse cough than ever, and her eyes rolled in her head as if she were giving up the ghost.

"I'd rather do it than see her choke to death!" cried the Bishop in despair.

"Then, by ginger, you can try it, sonny!" said Uncle Abner. "Now this time we'll tie her head up. Take it slow, and make a good job of it."

Accordingly they pried poor Buttercup's jaws open to put a wooden gag between them, tied her head up, and kept her as still as they could, while we women held the lanterns.

"Now, sonny, strip up your sleeve and reach as fur down 's you can! Wind your little fingers in among that green stuff stickin' up there that ain't hardly big enough to call green stuff, give it a twist, and pull for all you're worth. Land! what a skinny little pipe stem!"

The Bishop had stripped up his sleeve. It was a slender thing, his arm; but he had driven the red cow all summer, borne her tantrums, protected her from the consequences of her own obstinacy, taking a future owner's pride in her splendid flow of milk--grown to love her, in a word--and now she was choking to death. Love can put a deal of strength into a skinny little pipe-stem at such a time, and it was only a slender arm and hand that could have done the work.

Phil trembled with nervousness, but he made a dexterous and dashing entrance into the awful cavern of Buttercup's mouth; descended upon the tiny clump of green spills or spikes, wound his little fingers in among them as firmly as he could, and then gave a long, steady determined pull with all the strength in his body. That was not so much in itself, to be sure, but he borrowed a good deal more from some reserve quarter, the location of which nobody knows anything about, but upon which everybody draws in time of need.

Such a valiant pull you would never have expected of the Little Bishop. Such a pull that, to his own utter amazement, he suddenly found himself lying flat on his back on the barn floor, with a very slippery something in his hand, and a fair-sized but rather dilapidated turnip on the end of it.

"That's the business!" cried Moses.

"I could 'a' done it as easy as nothin' if my arm had been a leetle mite smaller," said Bill Jones.

"You're a trump, sonny!" exclaimed Uncle Abner as he helped Moses untie Buttercup's head and took the gag out. "You're a trump, and, by ginger, the cow's yourn!"

The welcome air rushed into Buttercup's lungs and cooled her parched, torn throat. She was pretty nearly spent, poor thing! and bent her head gently over the Little Bishop's shoulder as he threw his arms joyfully about her neck, and whispered, "You're my truly cow now, ain't you, Buttercup?"

"Aunt Betty," I said, as we walked home under the harvest moon, "there are all sorts of cowards, aren't there, and I don't think the Little Bishop is the worst kind, do you?"

TRYING TO SEE THE WIND.

Did you ever try to see the wind? It is a very pretty experiment, and one easily performed. In the first place choose a windy day, then secure a polished piece of metal. Hold the metallic surface at right angles to the direction of the wind. For example, if the wind is in the north, hold the saw east and west inclined about forty-five degrees to the horizon. Now look carefully at the sharp edge, and you will shortly see the wind pouring over it like a waterfall. Do not try the experiment on a rainy or a murky day.

TORTOISE-SHELLS.

It was a bright winter morning, and the air outside was frosty and still. A young maid sat in her cozy chamber dressing her golden-brown curls, and as she drew her comb through them she heard a sharp crackling sound that caused her to put on her "thinking-cap," as was her habit when anything out of the common occurred, for she liked to reason out matters in her own quiet way. In her studies she had not as yet reached any allusion to that subtile power known as electricity, so she concluded that the sound must have come from the comb, which she thought was possibly made from the shell of a snapping-turtle. Having settled the affair comfortably in her mind, she finished her toilet hastily, that she might lose no time in announcing her discovery to the family at the breakfast table.

It was the fortunate lot of the head of the family to have been wrecked on a coral reef. I say fortunate, because "All's well that ends well," and inside the reef was a small island, on which he, the head of the family, had the rare experience of witnessing the catching of turtles and the removal of their shells by some native fishermen.

After the morning meal was over I told the little maid about it, as I briefly tell you here.

I was on my way to Central America, and had almost reached my journey's end when our ship was wrecked. We struck the reef about nine o'clock at night. It was a very dark and thick night, and the waves dashed over us as we huddled together on the quarter-deck while waiting for daylight to determine in which direction lay possible safety. When the sun rose the next morning we saw approaching us a canoe containing four Indians, with whose assistance we got over the dangerous rocks, and were soon on the island, which was about ten miles distant from the mainland.

It was a beautiful morning, and after the Indians had made us some hot coffee and tortillas , they went off with the Captain and crew to the wreck, to see if anything could be saved from it, while I lay under the cocoanut-trees enjoying the soft tropical air and congratulating myself on my escape.

When the Captain returned, he determined that he had been driven about twenty-five miles out of his course by a strong current that sets up northward along the eastern coast of Yucatan, for which he had not made proper allowance.

Day was the period of rest for the Indians, and as we all needed sleep, we closed our eyes on the lovely yellow light of the Caribbean Sea, and stretched ourselves under the shelter of the thatched hut.

This turtle has a small squat head covered with plates of shell, and has a jaw like the beak of a hawk. It has four limbs, or flippers--the hindermost being quite long and winglike--which are armed with a couple of strong nails, with which it digs holes in the sand when it comes ashore to lay its eggs, and it is very fierce at such times if disturbed. When the eggs are laid and carefully covered, Mrs. Turtle waddles off to the water, and gives no further thought of her two hundred or more children which she has left behind.

In the course of time the hot sun hatches out the little chelonians, who burst their shells, and digging their way out of the sand, toddle town the beach to the sea to begin their careers.

Their food consists of sea-weed, crabs, and fishes, and when they grow to be about two hundred pounds in weight, and their shells become valuable, it behooves them to keep their "weather eyes" open for dark-skinned men when their maternal instincts prompt them to ramble on shelving beaches by the light of the moon.

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