d
me an outlet for my increase. I have branded as many as twenty-five
thousand calves in a year, and to this source of income alone I
attribute the foundation of my present fortune. As a source of wealth
the progeny of the cow in my State has proven a perennial harvest,
with little or no effort on the part of the husbandman. Reversing
the military rule of moving against the lines of least resistance,
experience has taught me to follow those where Nature lends its
greatest aid. Mine being strictly a grazing country, by preserving the
native grasses and breeding only the best quality of cattle, I have
always achieved success. I have brought up my boys to observe these
economics of nature, and no plow shall ever mar the surface where
my cows have grazed, generation after generation, to the profit and
satisfaction of their owner. Where once I was a buyer in carload lots
of the best strains of blood in the country, now I am a seller by
hundreds and thousands of head, acclimated and native to the soil. One
man to his trade and another to his merchandise, and the mistakes
of my life justly rebuke me for dallying in paths remote from my
legitimate calling.

There is a close relationship between a cowman and his herds. My
insight into cattle character exceeds my observation of the human
family. Therefore I wish to confess my great love for the cattle of
the fields. When hungry or cold, sick or distressed, they express
themselves intelligently to my understanding, and when dangers of
night and storm and stampede threaten their peace and serenity, they
instinctively turn to the refuge of a human voice. When a herd was
bedded at night, and wolves howled in the distance, the boys on guard
easily calmed the sleeping cattle by simply raising their voices in
song. The desire of self-preservation is innate in the animal race,
but as long as the human kept watch and ward, the sleeping cattle had
no fear of the common enemy. An incident which I cannot explain, but
was witness to, occurred during the war. While holding cattle for the
Confederate army we received a consignment of beeves from Texas. One
of the men who accompanied the herd through called my attention to a
steer and vouchsafed the statement that the animal loved music,--that
he could be lured out of the herd with singing. To prove his
assertion, the man sang what he termed the steer's favorite, and to
the surprise of every soldier present, a fine, big mottled beef walked
out