CURRIED COW
by Ambrose Bierce
My Aunt Patience, who tilled a small farm in
the state of Michigan, had a favorite cow. This
creature was not a good cow, nor a profitable
one, for instead of devoting a part of her
leisure to secretion of milk and production of
veal she concentrated all her faculties on the
study of kicking. She would kick all day and
get up in the middle of the night to kick. She
would kick at anything--hens, pigs, posts, loose
stones, birds in the air and fish leaping out
of the water; to this impartial and catholic-minded
beef, all were equal--all similarly undeserving.
Like old Timotheus, who "raised a mortal to the
skies," was my Aunt Patience's cow; though, in
the words of a later poet than Dryden, she did
it "more harder and more frequently." It was
pleasing to see her open a passage for herself
through a populous barnyard. She would flash
out, right and left, first with one hind-leg
and then with the other, and would sometimes,
under favoring conditions, have a considerable
number of domestic animals in the air at once.
Her kicks, too, were as admirable in quality as
inexhaustible in quantity. They were incomparably
superior to those of the untutored kine that had
not made the art a life study--mere amateurs that
kicked "by ear," as they say in music. I saw her
once standing in the road, professedly fast asleep,
and mechanically munching her cud with a sort of
Sunday morning lassitude, as one munches one's
cud in a dream. Snouting about at her side,
blissfully unconscious of impending danger and
wrapped up in thoughts of his sweetheart, was a
gigantic black hog--a hog of about the size and
general appearance of a yearling rhinoceros.
Suddenly, while I looked--without a visible
movement on the part of the cow--with never a
perceptible tremor of her frame, nor a lapse in
the placid regularity of her chewing--that hog
had gone away from there--had utterly taken his
leave. But away toward the pale horizon a minute
black speck was traversing the empyrean with the
speed of a meteor, and in a moment had disappeared,
without audible report, beyond the distant hills.
It may have been that hog.
Currying cows is not, I think, a common practice,
even in Michigan; but as this one had never needed
milking, of course she had to be subjected to some
equivalent form of persecution; and irritating her
skin with a currycomb was thought as disagreeable
an attention as a thoughtful affection could devise.
At least she thought it so; though I suspect her
mistress really meant it for the good creature's
temporal advantage. Anyhow my aunt always made it
a condition to the employment of a farm-servant
that he should curry the cow every morning; but
after just enough trials to convince himself that
it was not a sudden spasm, nor a mere local
disturbance, the man would always give notice
of an intention to quit, by pounding the beast
half-dead with some foreign body and then limping
home to his couch. I don't know how many men the
creature removed from my aunt's employ in this
way, but judging from the number of lame persons
in that part of the country, I should say a good
many; though some of the lameness may have been
taken at second-hand from the original sufferers
by their descendants, and some may have come by
contagion.
I think my aunt's was a faulty system of agriculture.
It is true her farm labor cost her nothing, for
the laborers all left her service before any salary
had accrued; but as the cow's fame spread abroad
through the several States and Territories, it
became increasingly difficult to obtain hands;
and, after all, the favorite was imperfectly
curried. It was currently remarked that the cow
had kicked the farm to pieces--a rude metaphor,
implying that the land was not properly cultivated,
nor the buildings and fences kept in adequate
repair.
It was useless to remonstrate with my aunt: she
would concede everything, amending nothing. Her
late husband had attempted to reform the abuse
in this manner, and had had the argument all his
own way until he had remonstrated himself into
an early grave; and the funeral was delayed all
day, until a fresh undertaker could be procured,
the one originally engaged having confidingly
undertaken to curry the cow at the request of
the widow.
Since that time my Aunt Patience had not been in
the matrimonial market; the love of that cow had
usurped in her heart the place of a more natural
and profitable affection. But when she saw her
seeds unsown, her harvests ungarnered, her fences
overtopped with rank brambles and her meadows
gorgeous with the towering Canada thistle she
thought it best to take a partner.
When it transpired that my Aunt Patience
intended wedlock there was intense popular
excitement. Every adult single male became at
once a marrying man. The criminal statistics
of Badger county show that in that single year
more marriages occurred than in any decade
before or since. But none of them was my aunt's.
Men married their cooks, their laundresses,
their deceased wives' mothers, their enemies'
sisters--married whomsoever would wed; and
any man who, by fair means or courtship, could
not obtain a wife went before a justice of the
peace and made an affidavit that he had some
wives in Indiana. Such was the fear of being
married alive by my Aunt Patience.
Now, where my aunt's affection was concerned
she was, as the reader will have already
surmised, a rather determined woman; and the
extraordinary marrying epidemic having left
but one eligible male in all that county, she
had set her heart upon that one eligible male;
then she went and carted him to her home. He
turned out to be a long Methodist parson, named
Huggins.
Aside from his unconscionable length, the
Rev. Berosus Huggins was not so bad a fellow,
and was nobody's fool. He was, I suppose, the
most ill-favored mortal, however, in the whole
northern half of America--thin, angular,
cadaverous of visage and solemn out of all
reason. He commonly wore a low-crowned black
hat, set so far down upon his head as partly
to eclipse his eyes and wholly obscure the
ample glory of his ears. The only other
visible article of his attire (except a brace
of wrinkled cowskin boots, by which the word
"polish" would have been considered the
meaningless fragment of a lost language) was
a tight-fitting black frock-coat, preternaturally
long in the waist, the skirts of which fell
about his heels, sopping up the dew. This he
always wore snugly buttoned from the throat
downward. In this attire he cut a tolerably
spectral figure. His aspect was so conspicuously
unnatural and inhuman that whenever he went
into a cornfield, the predatory crows would
temporarily forsake their business to settle
upon him in swarms, fighting for the best
seats upon his person, by way of testifying
their contempt for the weak inventions of
the husbandman.
The day after the wedding my Aunt Patience
summoned the Rev. Berosus to the council
chamber, and uttered her mind to the following
intent:
"Now, Huggy, dear, I'll tell you what there is
to do about the place. First, you must repair
all the fences, clearing out the weeds and
repressing the brambles with a strong hand.
Then you will have to exterminate the Canadian
thistles, mend the wagon, rig up a plow or two,
and get things into ship-shape generally. This
will keep you out of mischief for the better
part of two years; of course you will have to
give up preaching, for the present. As soon as
you have--O! I forgot poor Phoebe. She"----
"Mrs. Huggins," interrupted her solemn spouse, "I
shall hope to be the means, under Providence, of
effecting all needful reforms in the husbandry of
this farm. But the sister you mention (I trust
she is not of the world's people)--have I the
pleasure of knowing her? The name, indeed, sounds
familiar, but"----
"Not know Phoebe!" cried my aunt, with unfeigned
astonishment; "I thought everybody in Badger
knew Phoebe. Why, you will have to scratch her
legs, every blessed morning of your natural life!"
"I assure you, madam," rejoined the Rev. Berosus,
with dignity, "it would yield me a hallowed pleasure
to minister to the spiritual needs of sister Phoebe,
to the extent of my feeble and unworthy ability; but,
really, I fear the merely secular ministration of
which you speak must be entrusted to abler and, I
would respectfully suggest, female hands."
"Whyyy, youuu ooold, foooool!" replied my aunt,
spreading her eyes with unbounded amazement,
"Phoebe is a cow!"
"In that case," said the husband, with unruffled
composure, "it will, of course, devolve upon me
to see that her carnal welfare is properly attended
to; and I shall be happy to bestow upon her legs
such time as I may, without sin, snatch from my
strife with Satan and the Canadian thistles."
With that the Rev. Mr. Huggins crowded his hat
upon his shoulders, pronounced a brief benediction
upon his bride, and betook himself to the barn-yard.
Now, it is necessary to explain that he had known
from the first who Phoebe was, and was familiar,
from hearsay, with all her sinful traits. Moreover,
he had already done himself the honor of making
her a visit, remaining in the vicinity of her
person, just out of range, for more than an hour
and permitting her to survey him at her leisure
from every point of the compass. In short, he
and Phoebe had mutually reconnoitered and prepared
for action.
Amongst the articles of comfort and luxury which
went to make up the good parson's dot, and which
his wife had already caused to be conveyed to his
new home, was a patent cast-iron pump, about seven
feet high. This had been deposited near the barn-yard,
preparatory to being set up on the planks above
the barn-yard well. Mr. Huggins now sought out this
invention and conveying it to its destination put
it into position, screwing it firmly to the planks.
He next divested himself of his long gaberdine and
his hat, buttoning the former loosely about the
pump, which it almost concealed, and hanging the
latter upon the summit of the structure. The handle
of the pump, when depressed, curved outwardly between
the coat-skirts, singularly like a tail, but with
this inconspicuous exception, any unprejudiced
observer would have pronounced the thing Mr. Huggins,
looking uncommonly well.
The preliminaries completed, the good man carefully
closed the gate of the barnyard, knowing that as
soon as Phoebe, who was campaigning in the kitchen
garden, should note the precaution she would come
and jump in to frustrate it, which eventually she
did. Her master, meanwhile, had laid himself,
coatless and hatless, along the outside of the
close board fence, where he put in the time
pleasantly, catching his death of cold and peering
through a knot-hole.
At first, and for some time, the animal pretended
not to see the figure on the platform. Indeed she
had turned her back upon it directly she arrived,
affecting a light sleep. Finding that this stratagem
did not achieve the success that she had expected,
she abandoned it and stood for several minutes
irresolute, munching her cud in a half-hearted
way, but obviously thinking very hard. Then she
began nosing along the ground as if wholly absorbed
in a search for something that she had lost,
tacking about hither and thither, but all the time
drawing nearer to the object of her wicked intention.
Arrived within speaking distance, she stood for a
little while confronting the fraudful figure, then
put out her nose toward it, as if to be caressed,
trying to create the impression that fondling and
dalliance were more to her than wealth, power and
the plaudits of the populace--that she had been
accustomed to them all her sweet young life and
could not get on without them. Then she approached
a little nearer, as if to shake hands, all the
while maintaining the most amiable expression of
countenance and executing all manner of seductive
nods and winks and smiles. Suddenly she wheeled
about and with the rapidity of lightning dealt
out a terrible kick--a kick of inconceivable force
and fury, comparable to nothing in nature but a
stroke of paralysis out of a clear sky!
The effect was magical! Cows kick, not backward
but sidewise. The impact which was intended to
project the counterfeit theologian into the middle
of the succeeding conference week reacted upon
the animal herself, and it and the pain together
set her spinning like a top. Such was the velocity
of her revolution that she looked like a dim,
circular cow, surrounded by a continuous ring
like that of the planet Saturn--the white tuft
at the extremity of her sweeping tail! Presently,
as the sustaining centrifugal force lessened and
failed, she began to sway and wabble from side
to side, and finally, toppling over on her side,
rolled convulsively on her back and lay motionless
with all her feet in the air, honestly believing
that the world had somehow got atop of her and
she was supporting it at a great sacrifice of
personal comfort. Then she fainted.
How long she lay unconscious she knew not, but
at last she unclosed her eyes, and catching sight
of the open door of her stall, "more sweet than
all the landscape smiling near," she struggled
up, stood wavering upon three legs, rubbed her
eyes, and was visibly bewildered as to the points
of the compass. Observing the iron clergyman
standing fast by its faith, she threw it a look
of grieved reproach and hobbled heart-broken into
her humble habitation, a subjugated cow.
For several weeks Phoebe's right hind leg was
swollen to a monstrous growth, but by a season
of judicious nursing she was "brought round all
right," as her sympathetic and puzzled mistress
phrased it, or "made whole," as the reticent
man of God preferred to say. She was now as
tractable and inoffensive "in her daily walk
and conversation" (Huggins) as a little child.
Her new master used to take her ailing leg
trustfully into his lap, and for that matter,
might have taken it into his mouth if he had
so desired. Her entire character appeared to
be radically changed--so altered that one day
my Aunt Patience, who, fondly as she loved her,
had never before so much as ventured to touch
the hem of her garment, as it were, went
confidently up to her to soothe her with a pan
of turnips. Gad! how thinly she spread out that
good old lady upon the face of an adjacent stone
wall! You could not have done it so evenly with
a trowel.
~~~~~~~ THE END ~~~~~~~
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