the nation. Where the cow is, there is Arcadia; so far as her
influence prevails, there is contentment, humility, and sweet,
homely life.

Blessed is he whose youth was passed upon the farm, and if it was a
dairy farm, his memories will be all the more fragrant. The driving
of the cows to and from the pasture, every day and every season for
years,--how much of summer and of nature he got into him on these
journeys! What rambles and excursions did this errand furnish the
excuse for! The birds and birds'-nests, the berries, the squirrels,
the woodchucks, the beech woods with their treasures into which the
cows loved so to wander and to browse, the fragrant wintergreens and
a hundred nameless adventures, all strung upon that brief journey of
half a mile to and from the remote pastures. Sometimes a cow or two
will be missing when the herd is brought home at night; then to hunt
them up is another adventure. My grandfather went out one night to
look up an absentee from the yard, when he heard something in the
brush, and out stepped a bear into the path before him.

Every Sunday morning the cows were salted. The farm-boy would take a
pail with three or four quarts of coarse salt, and, followed by the
eager herd, go to the field and deposit the salt in handfuls upon
smooth stones and rocks and upon clean places on the turf. If you
want to know how good salt is, see a cow eat it. She gives the true
saline smack. How she dwells upon it, and gnaws the sward and licks
the stones where it has been deposited! The cow is the most
delightful feeder among animals. It makes one's mouth water to see
her eat pumpkins, and to see her at a pile of apples is distracting.
How she sweeps off the delectable grass! The sound of her grazing is
appetizing; the grass betrays all its sweetness and succulency in
parting under her sickle.

The region of which I write abounds in sheep also. Sheep love high,
cool, breezy lands. Their range is generally much above that of
cattle. Their sharp noses will find picking where a cow would fare
poorly indeed. Hence most farmers utilize their high, wild, and
mountain lands by keeping a small flock of sheep. But they are the
outlaws of the farm and are seldom within bounds. They make many
lively expeditions for the farm-boy,--driving them out of mischief,
hunting them up in the mountains, or salting them on the breezy
hills. Then there is the annual sheep-washing, when on a warm day in
May or early June the wh