big boy does not like this duty. It is
enough to say that it is a small boy's business, and the big boy knows
it. The excitement of hunting up and driving home a lot of slow,
meandering cattle is not sufficient for a mind capable of grappling
with the highest grade of agricultural ideas, and the youth who has
reached the mature age of fifteen or sixteen is very apt to think that
his mind is one of that kind.

But it is very different with the little boy. To go down into the
fields, with a big stick and a fixed purpose; to cross over the
ditches on boards that a few years ago he would not have been allowed
to put his foot upon; to take down the bars of the fences, just as if
he was a real man, and when he reaches the pasture, to go up to those
great cows, and even to the old bull himself, and to shake his stick
at them, and shout: "Go along there, now!"--these are proud things to
do.

And then what a feeling of power it gives him to make those big
creatures walk along the very road he chooses for them, and to hurry
them up, or let them go slowly, just as he pleases!

If, on the way, a wayward cow should make a sudden incursion over some
low bars into a forbidden field, the young director of her evening
course is equal to the emergency.

He is over the fence in an instant, and his little legs soon place him
before her, and then what are her horns, her threatening countenance,
and her great body to his shrill voice and brandished stick? Admitting
his superior power, she soon gallops back to the herd, with whack
after whack resounding upon her thick hide.

When at last the great, gentle beasts file, one by one, into the
barn-yard, there is a consciousness of having done something very
important in the air of the little fellow who brings up the rear of
the procession, and who shuts the gate as closely as possible on the
heels of the hindmost cow.

There are also many little outside circumstances connected with a
small boy's trip after the cows which make it pleasant to him.
Sometimes there are tremendous bull-frogs in the ditch. There are ripe
wild-cherries--splendid, bitter, and scarce--on the tree in the corner
of the field. The pears on the little tree by old Mrs. Hopkins's don't
draw your mouth up so very much, if you peel the skins off with your
knife. There is always a chance of seeing a rabbit, and although there
is no particular chance of getting it, the small boy does not think of
that. Now, although it woul