and so
followed Judas some hundred strong, patiently, and with a look of bland
wonder in their faces. I saw his broad back jogging in advance of them,
up a lime-washed incline where I was forbidden to follow. Then a door
shut, and in a minute back came Judas with the air of a virtuous
plough-bullock and took up his place in his byre. Somebody laughed
across the yard, but I heard no sound of cattle from the big brick
building into which the mob had disappeared. Only Judas chewed the cud
with a malignant satisfaction, and so I knew there was trouble, and ran
round to the front of the factory and so entered and stood aghast.

Who takes count of the prejudices which we absorb through the skin by
way of our surroundings? It was not the spectacle that impressed me. The
first thought that almost spoke itself aloud was: "They are killing
kine;" and it was a shock. The pigs were nobody's concern, but
cattle--the brothers of the Cow, the Sacred Cow--were quite otherwise.
The next time an M.P. tells me that India either Sultanises or
Brahminises a man, I shall believe about half what he says. It is
unpleasant to watch the slaughter of cattle when one has laughed at the
notion for a few years. I could not see actually what was done in the
first instance, because the row of stalls in which they lay was
separated from me by fifty impassable feet of butchers and slung
carcasses. All I know is that men swung open the doors of a stall as
occasion required, and there lay two steers already stunned, and
breathing heavily. These two they pole-axed, and half raising them by
tackle they cut their throats. Two men skinned each carcase, somebody
cut off the head, and in half a minute more the overhead rail carried
two sides of beef to their appointed place. There was clamour enough in
the operating room, but from the waiting cattle, invisible on the other
side of the line of pens, never a sound. They went to their death,
trusting Judas, without a word. They were slain at the rate of five a
minute, and if the pig men were spattered with blood, the cow butchers
were bathed in it. The blood ran in muttering gutters. There was no
place for hand or foot that was not coated with thicknesses of dried
blood, and the stench of it in the nostrils bred fear.

And then the same merciful Providence that has showered good things on
my path throughout sent me an embodiment of the city of Chicago, so that
I might remember it forever. Women come sometimes to