most
winsome confidence and gratitude. They dislike the confinement of their
parade-ground, yearning to roam over the grassy knolls, to snuff the
scent of the clover-blossoms, to drink the dew from buttercups, to lie
on the velvet turf and let the summer soak through their tough hides and
penetrate their inmost hearts. How calm then are their beautiful
mazarine blue eyes! What deep content relaxes every fibre of their
breathing bodies! How happily the days of Thalaba go by! They seem to
have attained to a premature tranquillity, the meditative mood of
full-grown kine. But if sometimes the morning wine of June leaps through
their veins with a strange vigor in its pulse, you shall see how bravely
their latent youthfulness asserts itself. Frisking with many an ungainly
gambol, they dash across the orchard, bending their backs into an angle,
brandishing their tails aloft, jerking, butting, pushing, and jostling
each other, in joy too intense for expression.

Driving in Natick one day, I observed, in some of the pleasant grounds
which ornament that town, a very nice little contrivance;--a coil of
fence you might call it, made of iron wire, capable of being rolled and
unrolled, and so enabling you to make an inclosure when and where you
chose. Set your fence down on one part of the lawn, turn in your lambs,
and when they have cropped all the grass, remove the establishment to
another place. I represented very ably and vividly to--the person
mentioned before--the advantages of such a fence to our calves and to
ourselves. It gives them at once the freedom of the turf, yet does not
loose them beyond our control. And then it looks so picturesque!

"Yes," said he, briskly, "we must have one."

"That we must!" I responded with enthusiasm, delighted at his ready
acquiescence. Not that a non-acquiescence would have made any difference
in the result, but the process would have been more tedious.

The next morning he called me out, with great flourish of trumpets, to
see The Iron Fence.

"It is not possible," I said, in astonishment. "You have had no time to
send."

"No,--I made it," he replied boldly.

"You!" I exclaimed, still more astonished. "I knew there was a tangle of
iron wire in the barn, but it looked rusty."

He made no reply, only whistled me on as if I were his dog,--he often
does that,--and I followed, musing. The iron fences that I had seen
showed a fine tracery, delicate and graceful, seemingly, as the cobwebs