big city to be killed. That's why all of our stock
goes to Hoytville, and small country places. Oh, those big cities are
awful places, Laura. It seems to me that it makes people wicked to
huddle them together. I'd rather live in a desert than a city. There's
Ch o. Every night since I've been there I pray to the Lord either to
change the hearts of some of the wicked people in it, or to destroy them
off the face of the earth. You know three years ago I got run down,
and your uncle said I'd got to have a change, so he sent me off to my
brother's in Ch o. I stayed and enjoyed myself pretty well, for it is
a wonderful city, till one day some Western men came in, who had been
visiting the slaughter houses outside the city. I sat and listened to
their talk, and it seemed to me that I was hearing the description of a
great battle. These men were cattle dealers, and had been sending stock
to Ch o, and they were furious that men, in their rage for wealth, would
so utterly ignore and trample on all decent and humane feelings as to
torture animals as the Ch o men were doing.

"It is too dreadful to repeat the sights they saw. I listened till they
were describing Texan steers kicking in agony under the torture that was
practised, and then I gave a loud scream, and fainted dead away. They
had to send for your uncle, and he brought me home, and for days and
days I heard nothing but shouting and swearing, and saw animals dripping
with blood, and crying and moaning in their anguish, and now, Laura, if
you'd lay down a bit of Ch o meat, and cover it with gold, I'd spurn it
from me. But what am I saying? you're as white as a sheet. Come and see
the cow stable. John's just had it whitewashed."

Miss Laura took her aunt's arm, and I walked slowly behind them. The cow
stable was a long building, well-built, and with no chinks in the walls,
as Jenkins's stable had. There were large windows where the afternoon
sun came streaming in, and a number of ventilators, and a great many
stalls. A pipe of water ran through the stalls from one end of the
stable to the other. The floor was covered with sawdust and leaves, and
the ceiling and tops of the walls were whitewashed. Mrs. Wood said that
her husband would not have the walls a glare of white right down to the
floor, because he thought it injured the animals' eyes. So the lower
parts of the walls were stained a dark, brown color.

There were doors at each end of the stable, and just now they stoo