ad to go out twice with the lantern and survey my
treasure before I went to bed. Did she not come from the delectable
mountains, and did I not have a sort of filial regard for her as toward
my foster mother?

This was during the Arcadian age at the capital, before the easy-going
southern ways had gone out and the prim new northern ways had come in,
and when the domestic animals were treated with distinguished
consideration and granted the freedom of the city. There was a charm of
cattle in the streets and upon the commons: goats cropped your rose
bushes through the pickets, and nooned upon your front porch, and pigs
dreamed Arcadian dreams under your garden fence or languidly frescoed it
with pigments from the nearest pool. It was a time of peace; it was the
poor man's golden age. Your cow, or your goat, or your pig led a
vagrant, wandering life, and picked up a subsistence wherever they
could, like the bees, which was almost everywhere. Your cow went forth
in the morning and came home fraught with milk at night, and you never
troubled yourself where she went or how far she roamed.

Chloe took very naturally to this kind of life. At first I had to go
with her a few times and pilot her to the nearest commons, and then left
her to her own wit, which never failed her. What adventures she had,
what acquaintances she made, how far she wandered, I never knew. I never
came across her in my walks or rambles. Indeed, on several occasions I
thought I would look her up and see her feeding in the national
pastures, but I never could find her. There were plenty of cows, but
they were all strangers. But punctually, between four and five o'clock
in the afternoon, her white horns would be seen tossing above the gate
and her impatient low be heard. Sometimes, when I turned her forth in
the morning, she would pause and apparently consider which way she would
go. Should she go toward Kendall Green to-day, or follow the Tiber, or
over by the Big Spring, or out around Lincoln Hospital? She seldom
reached a conclusion till she had stretched forth her neck and blown a
blast on her trumpet that awoke the echoes in the very lantern on the
dome of the capitol. Then, after one or two licks, she would disappear
around the corner. Later in the season, when the grass was parched or
poor on the commons, and the corn and cabbage tempting in the garden,
Chloe was loth to depart in the morning, and her deliberations were
longer than ever, and very ofte