How Beecher Kept a Cow.

Te Aroha News, Volume II, Issue 72, 18 October 1884, Page 5

How Beecher Kept a Cow.

"I can remember," said Henry Ward Boecher, " when I received an old cow in payment of a bad debt. It was a very bad debt and I came to consider it a bad payment. She was a thin cow, but the former owner said she was better than she looked, being a cross between a Jersey and the Durham. She looked as if she might have been a cross between an old hair trunk and an abandoned hoopskirt. I kept the brute three days, and no one, except perhaps Lieut Atwell, could ever appreciate the sufforing I endured in that time. The first night she br.oke through the fence and reduced to" a pulp all the underclothing belonging to a next door neighbour. She put her horns through my bath-tub, and ate up all my geraniums. She was to give three gallons of milk a day, but she seemed short just thon, and never had that to spare while wo kept her. Tho second day she walked into the kitchen, upset a pan of butter and a tub of lard Then she fell down a well, and when I got her out at at a cost of $5, she took the colic, whooping cough,or something, and kept us awake all night. Not a green thing was left in my garden ; my neighbour's peach trees and the rope on which his undcr-wear grow were as bare of fruit as a single-tree and ho did not havo a twig of shrubbery left. My neighbour cume over to see me and said : " ' Now, I don't desire any quarrel, but I want you to keep your cow out of my shrubbery.' " • And I want you, my friend,' Paid I, ' to keep your shrubbery out of my cow. ' "