as a touch of rhetoric on my part, for I didn't suppose that I could
any more than she did, though I was resolved to make a gallant fight,
even if I had to enlist the services of the dry cleaner, who was the
only person who voluntarily called almost daily to see if we had any
work to be done.

The joke of it was that I had no trouble at all. A youth of sixteen, who
viewed me in the light of "opportunity knocking at the door," gladly
accepted my terms. He was the son of the foreman at a dairy in the
neighborhood, and rode over night and morning on a staid old mare loaned
him by the dairyman.

Donald was bright and willing, and eventually was able to get near
enough to Poppy to milk her, though she never liked him. The Finn woman
was the only person with whom she was in sympathy. I think they were
both Socialists. Donald said we must do something about the flies. I
told him about my attempts to dress her in burlap, and we concluded that
a spray was the thing. Donald brought a nice antiseptic smelling
mixture, and we put it on her with the rose sprayer. Probably we were
too impulsive; anyway, the milk was very queer. Did you ever eat saffron
cake in Cornwall? It tasted like that. The children declined it firmly,
and I sympathized with them. After practice we managed to spray her in a
more limited way.

By this time we were having sherbet instead of ice-cream for Sunday
dinner, and my ideas of a private cow had greatly altered.

I have a black list that has been growing through life; things I wish
never to have again: tapioca pudding, fresh eggs if I have to hear the
hen brag about it at 5 A.M., tripe, and home-grown milk, and to this
list I have lately added cheese. Every one is familiar with the maxim
that rest is a change of occupation. J----, being tired of Latin verbs,
Greek roots, and dull scholars generally, took up some interesting
laboratory work after we emigrated to California. Growing Bulgarian
bacilli to make fermented milk that would keep us all perennially
amiable while we grew to be octogenarians, was one thing, but when the
company, lured by the oratory of a cheese expert, were beguiled into
making cream cheese--just the sort of cheese that Lucullus and Ponce de
Leon both wanted but did not find--our troubles began. The company is
composed of one minister with such an angelic expression that no one can
refuse to sign anything if he holds out a pen; one aviator with youth,
exuberant spirits, and a New En