Elbow-Room Part 9

"And besides that, you know how kinder flat raw milk tastes--kinder insipid and mean. Now, Prof. Huxley, he says that there is only one thing that will vivify milk and make it luxurious to the palate, and that is water. Give it a few jerks under the pump, and out it comes sparkling and delicious, like nectar. I dunno how it is, but Prof.

Huxley says that it undergoes some kinder chemical change that nothing else'll bring about but a flavoring of fine old pump-water. You know the doctors all water the milk for babies. They know mighty well if they didn't those young ones'd shrink all up and sorter fade away.

Nature is the best judge. What makes cows drink so much water?

Instinct, sir--instinct. Something whispers to 'em that if they don't sluice in a little water that caseine'd make 'em giddy and eat 'em up.

Now, what's the odds whether I put in the water or the cow does? She's only a poor brute beast, and might often drink too little; but when I go at it, I bring the mighty human intellect to bear on the subject; I am guided by reason, and I can water that milk so's it'll have the greatest possible effect.

"Now, there's chalk. I know some people have an idea that it's wrong to fix up your milk with chalk. But that's only mere blind bigotry.

What is chalk? A substance provided by beneficent nature for healing the ills of the human body. A cow don't eat chalk because it's not needed by her. Poor uneducated animal! she can't grasp these higher problems, and she goes on nibbling sour-gra.s.s and other things, and filling her milk with acid, which destroys human membranes and induces colic. Then science comes to the rescue. Professor Huxley tells us that chalk cures acidity. Consequently, I get some chalk, stir it in my cans and save the membranes of my customers without charging them a cent for it--actually give it away; and yet they talk about us milkmen 'sif we were buccaneers and enemies of the race.

"But I don't care. My conscience is clear. I know mighty well that I have a high and holy mission to perform, and I'm going to perform it if they burn me at the stake. What do I care how much this pump costs me if it spreads blessings through the community? What difference does it make to a man of honor like me if chalk is six cents a pound so long as I know that without it there wouldn't be a membrane in this community? Now, look at the thing in the right light, and you'll believe me that before another century rolls around a grateful universe will wors.h.i.+p the memory of the first milkman who ever had a pump and who doctored his milk with chalk. It will, unless justice is never to have her own."

Then Mr. Biles rigged the sucker in the pump, toned up a few cans of milk, corrected the acidity, and went into the house to receipt the judge's bill.

Mr. Biles' theory interested the judge, but the argument did not convince him. And so the judge resolved to buy a cow and obtain pure milk, without regard for the alleged views of Professor Huxley.

Accordingly, he purchased a cow of a man named Smith, who lives over at the Rising Sun. She was warranted to be fresh and a first-rate milker. When Judge Twiddler got her home, he asked his hired man, Mooney, if he knew how to milk a cow, and Mooney said of course he did. The animal, therefore, was consigned to Mooney's care. On the next day, however, Mooney came into the house to see the judge, and he said,

"Judge, that man cheated you in that cow. Why, she's the awfullest old beast that ever stood on four legs Dry as punk; hasn't got a drop of milk in her. That's a positive fact. I've been trying to milk her for three or four hours, and can't get a drop. Might as well attempt to milk a clothes-horse. Regular fraud!"

"This is very extraordinary," exclaimed the judge.

"Yes, sir; and she's wicked. I never saw such a disposition in a cow.

Why, while I was working with her she kicked like a flint-lock musket; b.u.t.ted and rared around. I'd rather fool with a tiger than with a cow like that."

So the judge drove over to the Rising Sun to see Smith about it; and when he complained that Smith had sold him a worthless and vicious beast, and a dry cow at that, Smith said there must be some mistake about it. He agreed to go back with the judge and investigate the matter. When they reached the judge's stable, Mooney was not about, but Smith descended from the wagon, approached the cow, and, to the astonishment of the judge, milked her without the slightest difficulty, the cow meantime remaining perfectly quiet, and even breaking out now and then into what the judge thought looked like smiles of satisfaction. And then the judge went out to hunt up his hired man. He said to him,

"Mooney, what did you mean by telling me that our cow was dry and ugly? You said you couldn't milk her, but Mr. Smith does so without any difficulty, and the cow remains perfectly pa.s.sive."

"I'd like to see him do it," said Mooney, incredulously.

Then Smith sat down and proceeded to perform the operation again. When he began, Mooney exclaimed,

"Why, my gracious! that isn't the way you milk a cow, is it?"

"Of course it is," replied Smith. "How else would you do it?"

"Well, well! and that's the way _you_ milk, is it? I see now I didn't go about it exactly right. Why, you know, I never had much experience at the business; I was brought up in town, and, be George, when I tackled her, I threw her over on her back and tried to milk her with a clothes-pin. I see now I was wrong. We live and learn, don't we?"

[Ill.u.s.tration: THE JUDGE'S COW]

So Smith went home, and the cow remained, and the judge's man waxes stronger in experience with the mysteries of existence daily.

But the cow was not a perfect animal, after all. Among other things, Smith a.s.sured the judge that she had a splendid appet.i.te. He said that she was the easiest cow with her feed that he ever saw; she would eat almost anything, and she was generally hungry.

At the end of the first week after she came, Mrs. Twiddler concluded to churn. The hired man spent the whole day at the crank, and about sunset the b.u.t.ter came. They got it out, and found that there was almost half a pound. Then Mrs. Twiddler began to see how economical it was to make her own b.u.t.ter. A half pound at the store cost thirty cents. The wages of that man for one day were one dollar, and so the b.u.t.ter was costing about three dollars a pound, without counting the keep of the cow. When they tried the b.u.t.ter, it was so poor that they couldn't eat it, and they gave it to the man to grease the wheelbarrow with. It seemed somewhat luxurious and princely to maintain a cow for the purpose of supplying grease at three dollars a pound for the wheelbarrow, but it was hard to see precisely where the profits came in. After about a fortnight the cow seemed so unhappy in the stable that the judge turned her out in the yard.

The first night she was loose she upset the grape-arbor with her horns and ate four young peach trees and a dwarf pear tree down to the roots. The next day they gave her as much hay as she would eat, and it seemed likely that her appet.i.te was appeased. But an hour or two afterward she swallowed six croquet-b.a.l.l.s that were lying upon the gra.s.s, and ate half a table-cloth and a pair of drawers from the clothes-line. That evening her milk seemed thin, and the judge attributed it to the indigestibility of the table-cloth.

During the night she must have got to walking in her sleep, for she climbed over the fence; and when she was discovered, she was swallowing one of Mrs. Twiddler's hoopskirts. That evening she ran dry and didn't give any milk at all. The judge thought the exercise she had taken must have been too severe, and probably the hoopskirt was not sufficiently nutritious. It was comforting, however, to reflect that she was less expensive, from the latter point of view, when she was dry than when she was fresh. Next morning she ate the spout off the watering-pot, and then put her head in the kitchen window and devoured two dinner-plates and the cream-jug. Then she went out and lay down on the strawberry-bed to think. While there something about Judge Twiddler's boy seemed to exasperate her; and when he came over into the yard after his ball, she inserted her horns into his trowsers and flung him across the fence. Then she went to the stable and ate a litter of pups and three feet of the trace-chain.

The judge felt certain that her former owner didn't deceive him when he said her appet.i.te was good. She had hunger enough for a drove of cattle and a couple of flocks of sheep. That day the judge went after the butcher to get him to buy her. When he returned with him, she had just eaten the monkey-wrench and the screw-driver, and she was trying to put away a fence-paling. The butcher said she was a fair-enough sort of cow, but she was too thin. He said he would buy her if the judge would feed her up and fatten her; and the judge said he would try. He gave her that night food enough for four cows, and she consumed it as if she had been upon half rations for a month. When she finished, she got up, reached for the hired man's straw hat, ate it, and then, bolting out into the garden, she put away the honeysuckle vine and a coil of India-rubber hose. The man said that if it was his cow he would kill her; and the judge told him that he had perhaps better just knock her on the head in the morning.

During the night she had another attack of somnambulism, and while wandering about she ate the door-mat from the front porch, bit off all the fancy-work on top of the cast-iron gate, swallowed six loose bricks that were piled up against the house, and then had a fit among the rose bushes. When the judge came down in the morning, she seemed to be breathing her last, but she had strength enough left to seize a newspaper that the judge held in his hand; and when that was down, she gave three or four kicks and rolled over and expired. It cost the judge three dollars to have the carcase removed. Since then he has bought his b.u.t.ter and milk and given up all kinds of live-stock.

CHAPTER X.

_OUR CIVIL SERVICE_.

Some of the public officers of Millburg are interesting in their way.

The civil service system of the village is based upon the principle that if there is any particular function that a given man is wholly unfitted to perform he should be chosen to perform it. The result is that the business of our very small government goes plunging along in the most surprising manner, with a promise that it will end some day in chaos and revolution--of course upon a diminutive scale.

A representative man is Mr. Bones, the solitary night-watchman of the town. One of the duties of Mr. Bones is to light the street-lamps. It is an operation which does not require any very extraordinary effort of the intellect; but during a part of the summer the mind of Mr.

Bones did not seem to be equal to the strain placed upon it by this duty. It was observed that whenever there were bright moonlight nights Mr. Bones would have all the lamps burning from early in the evening until dawn, while upon the nights when there was no moon he would not light them at all, and the streets would be as dark as tar. At last people began to complain about it, and one day one of the supervisors called to see Mr. Bones about it. He remarked to him,

"Mr. Bones, people are finding fault because you light up on moonlight nights and don't light the lamps when it is dark. I'd like you to manage the thing a little better."

"It struck me as being singular, too, but I can't help it. I've got instructions to follow the almanac, and I'm going to follow it."

"Did the almanac say there'd be no moon last night?"

"Yes, it did."

"Well, the moon was s.h.i.+ning, though, and at its full."

"I know," said Mr. Bones, "and that's what gits me. How in the thunder the moon kin s.h.i.+ne when the almanac says it won't beats me out.

Perhaps there's something the matter with the moon; got shoved off her course may be."

"I guess not."

"Well, it's changed off somehow, and I've got to have something regular to go by. I'm going by what the almanac says; and if the moon's going to shuffle around kinder loose and not foller the almanac, that's its lookout. If the almanac says no moon, then I'm bound to light the lamps if there's millions of moons s.h.i.+ning in the sky. Them's my orders, and I'll mind 'em."

"How d'you know the almanac is not wrong?"

"Because I know it ain't. It was always right before."

"Let's look at it."

"There it is. Look there, now. Don't it say full moon on the 20th? and this yer's only the 9th, and yet it's full moon now."

"That's so; and--Er--er--Less--see Er-er--Mr. Bones, do you know what year this almanac is for?"

"Why, 1876, of course."

"No, it isn't; it's for 1866. It's ten years old."

"Oh no! 1866! Well, now, it is. I declare! 1866! Why, merciful Moses!