habits of the cow
and the chickens in the yard. I always found something to do that was
of no use to anybody. I had no particular fondness for animals; I
liked to see what they did, merely because they were curious. The red
cow would go to meet my grandmother as she came out of the kitchen
with a bucket of bran for her. She drank it up in no time, the greedy
creature, in great loud gulps; and then she stood with dripping
nostrils over the empty bucket, staring at me on the other side. I
teased grandmother to give the cow more, because I enjoyed her
enjoyment of it. I wondered, if I ate from a bucket instead of a
plate, should I take so much more pleasure in my dinner? That red cow
liked everything. She liked going to pasture, and she liked coming
back, and she stood still to be milked, as if she liked that too.

The chickens were not all alike. Some of them would not let me catch
them, while others stood still till I took them up. There were two
that were particularly tame, a white hen and a speckled one. In
winter, when they were kept in the house, my sister and I had these
two for our pets. They let us handle them by the hour, and stayed just
where we put them. The white hen laid her eggs in a linen chest made
of bark. We would take the warm egg to grandmother, who rolled it on
our eyes, repeating this charm: "As this egg is fresh, so may your
eyes be fresh. As this egg is sound, so may your eyes be sound." I
still like to touch my eyelids with a fresh-laid egg, whenever I am so
happy as to possess one.

On the horses in the barn I bestowed the same calm attention as on the
cow, speculative rather than affectionate. I was not a very
tender-hearted infant. If I have been a true witness of my own growth,
I was slower to love than I was to think. I do not know when the
change was wrought, but to-day, if you ask my friends, they will tell
you that I know how to love them better than to solve their problems.
And if you will call one more witness, and ask me, I shall say that if
you set me down before a noble landscape, I feel it long before I
begin to see it.

Idle child though I was, the day was not long enough sometimes for my
idleness. More than once in the pleasant summer I stole out of bed
when even the cow was still drowsing, and went barefoot through the
dripping grass and stood at the gate, awaiting the morning. I found a
sense of adventure in being conscious when all other people were
asleep. There was not mu