s."

"You're right, Mendle, but you won't be righted," replied Buchmaier.

After a pause, Buchmaier began again:--

"Mr. Teacher, what do you think of the cruelty-to-animals societies?
Can anybody tell me not to do as I like with my own? Can anybody punish
me for such things?"

In this question again the teacher saw nothing but coarseness and
barbarity: with vehemence he advocated the ordinances and regulations
prohibiting the practices in question. Buchmaier rejoined:--

"In cities it may be right enough to admonish people not to be hard on
their cattle; but punishing is nobody's business. These coachmen and
omnibus-drivers and liveried officials--I mean to say, liveried
servants--have no feeling for their cattle, because very often they
don't even own 'em, and, as for having raised 'em, that's not to be
thought of. But in the country I've seen people cry more when one of
their cows falls than when their children die."

"The gentlefolks ought to stop being cruel to the peasants first," said
Mat. "The old judge always talked to his dog as if it was his baby, and
snarled at the farmers as if they were other people's dogs. Let them
get up a society first that nobody's to say 'sirrah' to a farmer any
more."

"Yes," said Buchmaier: "the point of the joke is that the
office-holders would like to have a little government over the cattle.
Mark my words: if things go on this way it won't be ten years before a
man will receive a command that he's to plant this and not that, and
that he's to plough this field and let that lie fallow: there'll be
societies about cruelty to the fields, and all that sort of thing."

"If men are not rational enough," said the teacher, "to be moderate in
all things, it is the duty of the state to inculcate what is good by
the fear of punishment."

"Never, if I live a hundred years," said Buchmaier, fiercely, suddenly
checking himself, however, either because he bethought himself of the
dignity of his station, or because he really had nothing else to say.
He emptied his glass by slow pulls; while a man with curled hair,
somewhat grizzled, said, in High German, but still in the singing tone
of the Jews, "Men may be punished for doing wrong; but there's no such
thing as forcing them to be good: goodness effected by compulsion is
not goodness."

"Right," said Buchmaier. The teacher, however, did not heed the remark:
it is not to be supposed that, like other learned men, he chose to
treat an o