And yet dogs and cats get credit
for being creatures of finer feelings than cows, merely because cows
have no tricks of barking, purring, and the like.
It is the same as between other people and a Dutchman. He has the same
poverty of expression that cows are cursed with. To wear his feelings
like an overcoat where everybody can see them is for him impossible. He
is the bovine of the human species. This is the reason why I used to
have such fearful crises once in a while in my dumb life, as when I was
treated so kindly by Captain Sproule just after my stepfather whipped
me; or when I nearly killed Ace, my fellow-driver, on the canal in my
first and successful rebellion; or when I used to grow white, and cry
like a baby in my fights with rival drivers. I am thought by my
children, I guess, an unfeeling person, because the surface of my nature
is ice, and does not ripple in every breeze; but when ice breaks up, it
rips and tears--and the thicker the ice, the worse the ravage. The only
reason for saying anything about this is that I am an old man, and I
have always wanted to say it: and there are some things I have said, and
some I shall now have to say, that will seem inconsistent unless the
truths just stated are taken into account.
But there are some things to be told about before this crisis can be
understood. Life dragged along for all of us from one year to another in
the slow movement of a new country in hard times: only I was at bottom
better off than most of my neighbors because I had cattle, though I
could not see how they then did me much good.
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