TEACHING A YOUNG CALF.

Daily Telegraph (Napier), Issue 3722, 20 June 1883, Page 4

TEACHING A YOUNG CALF.

Those who, like ourselves, have had the mournful experience know that there is nothing moro trying to the soul than tho operation of teaching a.young calf to drink. The process is familiar to every man who has brought up a calf from infancy. You seixe a pail of warm milk, go into the stable, catch the calf by tho ears, back him into a corner, and bestride his neck. Tho idiot rattiei' likoS this, and while you are reaching for the pail ho employs his time in slobbering tho lower corners of your jacket. You discover what tho blockhead is about and tax his oars. You can't help it. You feel that way, and let him have it. But the o.ilf can't tell for tho life of him why he has 133011 struck, and he gives a sudden and unexpected "flounce." He believes ho will go over and stay on the other side of the stable, but he doosn' t announce this beforehand. He starts on the impulse of the moment, and you can't tell when he arrives there. You ride along with him a little ivay. But the laws of gravitation are always about the same. Your legs—one on each side of the critter—keep up with the calf for about a second, but, your body doesn't. You slide over the calf and your back kisses the floor. Your head is soaking in the pail of milk. When you get up you are mad—uncommonly ho. Milk runs from your hair and imprecations out of your mouth, and you solemnly declare that you will teach that calf to drink or break his licck. Tho calf doseu't know of this reBolve, and he glares at you in stupid fright across the stable. He is not aware that he ivas the cauae of your downfall, and wonders ignorantly what is the matter. You don't try to explain to him, but furiously catch him by the ears, look back over your shoulder at the milk pail, and back up towards it dragging the calf after you. The calf is out of wind, and you haven't a particle of grace left in your heart. You are astride of tho calf's neck, and jamming the fingers of one hand in the calf's mouth, you place tho other on tho back of his head and above his nose into tho pail, fully resolved to strangle him if he don't drink. The calf hold's perfectly still—ominously so—and thero is n silence for tho space of half a minuto at the end of which time the blockhead, who hasn't drunk a drop, suddenly makes a fiplurgc, and knocks the pail over ; you are again reduced to a horizontal from a perpendicular, and when yoii rise the excitement's intense. You have been soaked with milk, "slobbered " on, and hurt. Not a drop of milk has gone down tho brute's throat, and there ho stands glaring at you, ready to furnish you with another free ride wherever you want to go. With an affidavit you bang him over the head with the empty puil, and hobble out of tho pen, fully resolved to let the four-footed fool starve ; and thus eudeth the first lesson.