tination is the thief of time. You get up and hump yourself
and go and feed the pigs.' He was so darn mean that I could not help
throwing a burdock burr against the side of the cow he was milking, and
it struck her right in the flank on the other side from where the deacon
was. Well, you'd a dide to see the cow jump up and blat. All four of
her feet were off the ground at a time, and I guess most of them hit the
deacon on his Sunday vest, and the rest hit the milk pail, and the cow
backed against the fence and bellered, and the deacon was all covered
with milk and cow hair, and he got up and throwed the three-legged stool
at the cow and hit her on the horn and it glanced off and hit me on the
pants just as I went over the fence to feed the pigs. I didn't know a
deacon could talk so sassy at a cow, and come so near swearing without
actually saying cuss words. Well, I lugged swill until I was homesick to
my stomach, and then I had to clean off horses, and go to the neighbors
about a mile away to borrow a lot of rakes to use the next day. I was so
tired I almost cried, and then I had to draw two barrels of water with
a well bucket, to cleanse for washing the next day, and by that time
I wanted to die. It was most nine o'clock, and I began to think about
supper, when the deacon said all they had was bread and milk for supper
Sunday night, and I rasseled with a tin basin of skim milk, and some
old back number bread, and wanted to go to bed, but the deacon wanted
to know if I was heathen enough to want to go to bed without evening
prayers. There was no one thing I was less mashed on than evening
prayers about that minute, but I had to take a prayer half an hour long
on the top of that skim milk, and I guess it curdled the milk, for I
hadn't been in bed more than half an hour before I had the worst colic a
boy ever had, and I thought I should die all alone up in that garret,
on the floor, with nothing to make my last hours pleasant but some rats
playing with ears of seed corn on the floor, and mice running through
some dry pea pods. But how different the deacon talked in the evening
devotions from what he did when the cow was galloping on him in the
barnyard. Well, I got through the colic and was just getting to sleep
when the deacon yelled for me to get up and hustle down stairs. I
thought may be the house was on fire, 'cause I smelled smoke, and I got
into my trousers and came down stairs on a jump yelling 'fire,' when the
dea