she wanted, but throw down armfuls under her feet, and then, like all her dainty race, she would utterly refuse to eat whatever had become dirty. If the door was latched, she pushed the latch up; if bars were placed across, she removed them with her horns; if a rope was used, she broke or stretched it; and if she could not get in otherwise, she would tear the whole away.

After trying many plans, the door was ingeniously hung from the top, so that, as was supposed, it would effectually prevent her unauthorized inroads; but next day it was found at the other end of the yard, having been carried thither on her head. Besides, the amount of hay she ate seemed to have no effect in diminishing the quantity of mash she wanted; rather she appeared to carry into practice the deceptive proposition of the stingy father to his hungry sons that he who ate the most meat should have the most pie-by demanding more bran the more hay she consumed.

In spite of these drawbacks she was an immense convenience. Her manufactory seemed to work better than more scientific and artificial arrangements, and turned out a more agreeable article than the most skillful chemical milkman. However disgraceful to human nature is the confession, science is no

where against a cow. To be sure, she would on
wash-days carry a few clothes off the lines, and drag

them around in the most nonchalant and unconcern-
ed way conceivable; would even now and then get
her horns mixed up with the lines generally, and pull
out half a dozen hooks; but the moment this was
done she was entirely satisfied, and would stand per-
fectly quiet until she was disencumbered. She made
more dirt than was altogether sightly, and a man had
to be engaged to come daily and remove it.

These various eccentricities added somewhat to
her cost, and made it difficult to compute the amount

accurately; but, apart from the value of clothes and clothes-lines, her feed cost thirty dollars a month, and the man's attendance six more. So long as she kept on giving twelve quarts a day, there was a clear profit of four cents daily, besides the thorough manuring of the yard, which with farmers is an important point, and would have been more valuable in this instance if it had been possible to grow any thing in it, and had it not been, unfortunately, that, for some unknown reason, not even a spear of grass had ever been willing to exist there.

The quantity of milk, however, soon began to diminish, until, after six weeks, the arrangement with our neighbor had to be discontinued. This reduced the profit, although Cushy still gave more than an abundance for our family, and there would have been a loss had not hay and bran come up to the occasion by coming down in price. The reader, therefore, must call upon the author of "Ten Acres Enough" to determine, by a few algebraical eliminations, whether, if a cow's yield falls off more or less, and her feed diminishes in price considerably, there is a loss or profit, and if so, why so, and how much. For my part, I never could arrive at any satisfactory conclusion except that pure milk and fresh cream were, either combined or separate, very satisfactory.

Cushy had an excellent disposition; she never exhibited but one evil passion, and that was for the meal-tub: she would feed from the hand or a pail, or, in fact, in any way, so long as she was fed enough. Upon this regimen she waxed fat, until it became a serious question whether she would ever again pass out of the doors that it was at first doubtful whether she would enter. Her stomach was of goodly size when she came, and I did not wonder that it occupied so much of her thoughts; but it grew prodigiously, and she had a way of standing still by the hour, with her head under the clothes on the lines, when the sun began to grow hot in the spring, or of lying at full length in their shade, that was evidently conducive to corpulency. When she wanted her meals, which she did not only at frequent intervals, but whenever any one came into the yard, she would go to the kitchen window, and, thrusting forward her head as far as the bars permitted, would "moo" gently to express her wants. If not attended to immediately, she would soon speak louder, and at last would demand food in the most peremptory tone of stentorian bovine lungs. She invariably had her desires gratified, and thus was this interesting evidence of intelligence greatly developed. She had an amusing way of playing with whatever boxes or baskets

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might be left in the yard, somewhat regardless, to be sure, of their fragile nature; she would carry them on her head round about, and occasionally pin them to the earth with a thrust of her horns; and if she found the stable, which was of wood, close and uncomfortable, she now and then walked out of it through the side, but did these things in so unconscious a way that no one could find fault.

She kept on growing fat and fatter (to continue her history and somewhat anticipate events)—until summer came, and it was necessary to send her to the country. Then the services of another Irishman, of course, were called into requisition, and he started off from the house with her, early one morning in June, to lead her eight miles to her future home at Flushing. Neither himself nor the cow was heard of again till late that night, when, with startled countenance, he related his adventures to my friend Weeville. He had hardly turned the corner before a butcher rushed out and announced that he wanted to buy that cow. Patrick indignantly refused, true to the aristocratic Irish idea that the employer is always above disposing of any thing; but the butcher was irrepressible, and, pulling out his wallet, offered ninety-five dollars for her; but Pat retorted, 'You'll not get the likes of her for ninety-five dol