e spot is surrounded by a high board fence, I think I have seen her
peeping at the cabbages through a knothole. At last she learns to open
the gate. It is a great triumph of bovine wit. She does it with her horn
or her nose, or may be with her ever-ready tongue. I doubt if she has
ever yet penetrated the mystery of the newer patent fastenings; but the
old-fashioned thumb-latch she can see through, give her time enough.

A large, lank, muley or polled cow used to annoy me in this way when I
was a dweller in a certain pastoral city. I more than half suspected she
was turned in by some one; so one day I watched. Presently I heard the
gate-latch rattle; the gate swung open, and in walked the old buffalo.
On seeing me she turned and ran like a horse. I then fastened the gate
on the inside and watched again. After long waiting the old cow came
quickly round the corner and approached the gate. She lifted the latch
with her nose. Then, as the gate did not move, she lifted it again and
again. Then she gently nudged it. Then, the obtuse gate not taking
the hint, she butted it gently, then harder and still harder, till it
rattled again. At this juncture I emerged from my hiding-place, when
the old villain scampered off with great precipitation. She knew she
was trespassing, and she had learned that there were usually some swift
penalties attached to this pastime.

I have owned but three cows and loved but one. That was the first one,
Chloe, a bright red, curly-pated, golden-skinned Devonshire cow, that an
ocean steamer landed for me upon the banks of the Potomac one bright May
Day many clover summers ago. She came from the north, from the pastoral
regions of the Catskills, to graze upon the broad commons of the
national capital. I was then the fortunate and happy lessee of an old
place with an acre of ground attached, almost within the shadow of the
dome of the Capitol. Behind a high but aged and decrepit board fence I
indulged my rural and unclerical tastes. I could look up from my homely
tasks and cast a potato almost in the midst of that cataract of marble
steps that flows out of the north wing of the patriotic pile. Ah! when
that creaking and sagging back gate closed behind me in the evening, I
was happy; and when it opened for my egress thence in the morning, I was
not happy. Inside that gate was a miniature farm, redolent of homely,
primitive life, a tumble-down house and stables and implements of
agriculture and horticultur