We and the World, Part I | Page 2

there, picked up a stick nearly as big as himself, and trotted
indignantly to drive her out. Our mother caught sight of him from an
upper window, and knowing that the temper of the cow was not to be
trusted, she called wildly to Jem, "Come in, dear, quick! Come in!
Dolly's loose!"
"I drive her out!" was Master Jem's reply; and with his little straw hat
well on the back of his head, he waddled bravely up to the cow,
flourishing his stick. The process interested me, and I dried my tears
and encouraged my brother; but Dolly looked sourly at him, and began
to lower her horns.
"Shoo! shoo!" shouted Jem, waving his arms in farming-man fashion,
and belabouring Dolly's neck with the stick. "Shoo! shoo!"
Dolly planted her forefeet, and dipped her head for a push, but catching
another small whack on her face, and more authoritative "Shoos!" she
changed her mind, and swinging heavily round, trotted off towards the
field, followed by Jem, waving, shouting, and victorious. My mother
got out in time to help him to fasten the gate, which he was much too
small to do by himself, though, with true squirely instincts, he was
trying to secure it.
But from our earliest days we both lived on intimate terms with all the
live stock. "Laddie," an old black cart-horse, was one of our chief
friends. Jem and I used to sit, one behind the other, on his broad back,
when our little legs could barely straddle across, and to "grip" with our
knees in orthodox fashion was a matter of principle, but impossible in
practice. Laddie's pace was always discreet, however, and I do not
think we should have found a saddle any improvement, even as to

safety, upon his warm, satin-smooth back. We steered him more by
shouts and smacks than by the one short end of a dirty rope which was
our apology for reins; that is, if we had any hand in guiding his course.
I am now disposed to think that Laddie guided himself.
But our beast friends were many. The yellow yard-dog always
slobbered joyfully at our approach; partly moved, I fancy, by love for
us, and partly by the exciting hope of being let off his chain. When we
went into the farmyard the fowls came running to our feet for corn, the
pigeons fluttered down over our heads for peas, and the pigs humped
themselves against the wall of the sty as tightly as they could lean, in
hopes of having their backs scratched. The long sweet faces of the
plough horses, as they turned in the furrows, were as familiar to us as
the faces of any other labourers in our father's fields, and we got fond
of the lambs and ducks and chickens, and got used to their being killed
and eaten when our acquaintance reached a certain date, like other
farm-bred folk, which is one amongst the many proofs of the
adaptability of human nature.
So far so good, on my part as well as Jem's. That I should like the
animals "on the place"--the domesticated animals, the workable
animals, the eatable animals--this was right and natural, and befitting
my father's son. But my far greater fancy for wild, queer, useless,
mischievous, and even disgusting creatures often got me into trouble.
Want of sympathy became absolute annoyance as I grew older, and
wandered farther, and adopted a perfect menagerie of odd beasts in
whom my friends could see no good qualities: such as the snake I kept
warm in my trousers-pocket; the stickleback that I am convinced I
tamed in its own waters; the toad for whom I built a red house of
broken drainpipes at the back of the strawberry bed, where I used to go
and tickle his head on the sly; and the long-whiskered rat in the barn,
who knew me well, and whose death nearly broke my heart, though I
had seen generations of unoffending ducklings pass to the kitchen
without a tear.
I think it must have been the beasts that made me take to reading: I was
so fond of Buffon's Natural History, of which there was an English

abridgment on the dining-room bookshelves.
But my happiest reading days began after the bookseller's agent came
round, and teased my father into taking in the Penny Cyclopædia; and
those numbers in which there was a beast, bird, fish, or reptile were the
numbers for me!
I must, however, confess that if a love for reading had been the only
way in which I had gone astray from the family habits and traditions, I
don't think I should have had much to complain of in the way of blame.
My father "pish"ed and "pshaw"ed when he caught me "poking over"
books,