lars, I got animated, and resolved that I would have that cow if it took my last cent. “One hundred and forty dollars," shouted my opponent. The auctioneer said it was the finest cow he had ever sold; and not knowing much about vendues, of course I believed him. It was a good deal of money for a minister to pay, but then I could get the whole matter off my hands by giving "a note." In utter defiance of everything I cried out, "One hundred and fifty dollars!", "Going at that," said the auctioneer. "Going at that! once! twice! three times! gone! Mr. Talmage has it." It was one of the proudest moments of our life. There she stood, tall, immense in the girth, horns branching graceful as a tree branch, full-uddered, silk-coated, pensive-eyed. We hired two boys to drive her home while we rode in a carriage. No sooner had we started than the cow showed what turned out to be one of her peculiarities, great speed of hoof. She left the boys, outran my horse, jumped the fence, frightened nearly to death a group of school-children, and by the time we got home we all felt as if we had all day been out on a fox-chase.

We never had any peace with that cow. She knew more tricks than a juggler. She could let down any bars, open any gate, outrun any dog and ruin the patience of any minister. We had her a year, and yet she never got over wanting to go to the vendue. Once started out of the yard, she was bound to see the sheriff. We coaxed her with carrots, and apples, and cabbage, and sweetest stalks, and the richest beverage of slops, but without avail.

As a milker she was a failure. "Mike," who lived just back of our place, would come in at nights from his "Kerry cow," a scraggly runt that lived on the commons, with his pail so full he had to carry it cautiously lest it spill over. But after our fullblooded had been in clover to her eyes all day,

Bridget would go out to the barn-yard, and tug and pull for a supply enough to make two or three custards. I said, "Bridget, you don't know how to milk. Let me try." I sat down by the cow, tried the full force of dynamics, but just at the moment when my success was about to be demonstrated, a sudden thought took her somewhere between the horns, and she started for the vendue, with one stroke of her back foot upsetting the small treasure I had accumulated, and leaving me a mere wreck of what I once was.

She had, among other bad things, a morbid appetite. Notwithstanding we gave her the richest herbaceous diet, she ate everything she could put her mouth on. She was fond of horse blankets and articles of human clothing. I found her one day at the clothes line, nearly choked to death, for she had swallowed one leg of something and seemed dissatisfied that she could not get down the other. The most perfect nuisance that I ever had about my place was that full-blooded.

Having read in our agricultural journals of cows that were slaughtered yielding fourteen hundred' pounds neat weight, we concluded to sell her to the butcher. We set a high price upon her and got itthat is, we took a note for it, which is the same thing. My bargain with the butcher was the only successful chapter in my bovine experiences. The only taking-off in the whole transaction was that the butcher ran away, leaving me nothing but a specimen of poor chirography, and I already had enough of that among my manuscripts.

My friend, never depend on high-breeds. Some of the most useless of cattle had ancestors spoken of in the "Commentaries of Cæsar." That Alderney whose grandfather used to graze on a lord's park in England may not be worth the grass she eats.

Do not depend too much on the high-sounding

name of Durham or Devon. As with animals, so with men. Only one President ever had a President for a son. Let every cow make her own name, and every man achieve his own position. It is no great credit to a fool that he had a wise grandfather. Many an Ayrshire and Hereford has had the hollowhorn and the foot-rot. Both man and animal are valuable in proportion as they are useful. "Mike's" cow beat my full-blooded.

F

THE CAPTAIN'S WELL.

JOHN G. WHITTIER.

ROM pain and peril, by land and main,
The shipwrecked sailor came back again;

Back to his home, where wife and child,

Who had mourned him lost, with joy were wild,

Where he sat once more with his kith and kin,
And welcomed his neighbors thronging in.

But when morning came he called for his spade.
"I must pay my debt to the Lord," he said.

"Why dig you here," asked the passer-by;
"Is there gold or silver the road so nigh?"

"No, friend," he answered, "but under this sod
Is the blessed water, the wine of God."

"Water! the Powwow is at your back,
And right before you the Merrimack,

And look you up, or look you down,

There's a well-sweep at every door in town."

"True," he said, "we have wells of our own;
But this I dig for the Lord alone."

Said the other: "This soil is dry, you know,
I doubt if a spring can be found below;

You had better consult before you dig,
Some water-witch, with a hazel twig."

"No, wet or dry, I will dig it here, Shallow or deep, if it takes a year.

In the Arab desert, where shade is none,
The waterless land of sand and sun,

Under the pitiless, brazen sky

My burning throat as the sand was dry;

My crazed brain listened in fever-dreams
For plash of buckets and ripple of streams;

And, opening my eyes to the blinding glare, And my lips to the breath of the blistering air,

Tortured alike by the heavens and earth,
I cursed, like Job, the day of my birth.

Then something tender and sad and mild
As a mother's voice to her wandering child,

Rebuked my frenzy, and, bowing my head,
I prayed as I never before had prayed:

Pity me, God, for I die of thirst;
Take me out of this land accurst;

And if ever I reach my home again,

Where earth has springs, and the sky has rain,

I will dig a well for the passer-by,
And none shall suffer with thirst as I.

I saw, as I passed my home once more,
The house, the barn, the elms by the door,

The grass-lined road, that riverward wound, The tall slate stones of the burying ground,

The belfry and steeple on meeting-house hill, The brook with its dam, and gray grist-mill,

And I knew in that vision beyond the sea,
The very place where my well must be.

God heard my prayer in that evil day;
He led my feet in their homeward way,

From false mirage and dried-up well,
And the hot sand-storms of a land of hell,

Till I saw at last, through a coast hill's gap,
The city held in its stony lap,

The mosques and the domes of scorched Muscat, And my heart leaped up with joy thereat;

For there was a ship at anchor lying,
A Christian flag at its mast-head flying,

And sweetest of sounds to my home-sick ear
Was my native tongue in the sailor's cheer.

Now, the Lord be thanked, I am back again, Where earth has springs, and the skies have rain.

And the well I promised by Oman's Sea,
I am digging for him in Amesbury."

His good wife wept, and his neighbors said: "The poor old captain is out of his head."

But from morn to noon, and from noon to night, He toiled at his task with main and might;

And when at last from the loosened earth,
Under his spade the stream gushed forth,

And fast as he climbed to his deep well's brim, The water he dug for followed him.

He shouted for joy: "I have kept my word,
And here is the well I promised the Lord!"

The long years came, and the long years went, And he sat by his roadside-well content;

He watched the travelers, heat-oppressed,
Pause by the way to drink and rest,

And the sweltering horses dip, as they drank,
Their nostrils deep in the cool, sweet tank;