experience
at the business; I was brought up in town, and, be George, when I
tackled her, I threw her over on her back and tried to milk her with a
clothes-pin. I see now I was wrong. We live and learn, don't we?"

[Illustration: THE JUDGE'S COW]

So Smith went home, and the cow remained, and the judge's man waxes
stronger in experience with the mysteries of existence daily.

But the cow was not a perfect animal, after all. Among other things,
Smith assured the judge that she had a splendid appetite. He said that
she was the easiest cow with her feed that he ever saw; she would eat
almost anything, and she was generally hungry.

At the end of the first week after she came, Mrs. Twiddler concluded
to churn. The hired man spent the whole day at the crank, and about
sunset the butter came. They got it out, and found that there was
almost half a pound. Then Mrs. Twiddler began to see how economical
it was to make her own butter. A half pound at the store cost thirty
cents. The wages of that man for one day were one dollar, and so the
butter was costing about three dollars a pound, without counting the
keep of the cow. When they tried the butter, it was so poor that they
couldn't eat it, and they gave it to the man to grease the wheelbarrow
with. It seemed somewhat luxurious and princely to maintain a cow
for the purpose of supplying grease at three dollars a pound for the
wheelbarrow, but it was hard to see precisely where the profits came
in. After about a fortnight the cow seemed so unhappy in the stable
that the judge turned her out in the yard.

The first night she was loose she upset the grape-arbor with her horns
and ate four young peach trees and a dwarf pear tree down to the
roots. The next day they gave her as much hay as she would eat, and
it seemed likely that her appetite was appeased. But an hour or two
afterward she swallowed six croquet-balls that were lying upon the
grass, and ate half a table-cloth and a pair of drawers from the
clothes-line. That evening her milk seemed thin, and the judge
attributed it to the indigestibility of the table-cloth.

During the night she must have got to walking in her sleep, for
she climbed over the fence; and when she was discovered, she was
swallowing one of Mrs. Twiddler's hoopskirts. That evening she ran dry
and didn't give any milk at all. The judge thought the exercise she
had taken must have been too severe, and probably the hoopskirt was
not sufficiently nutri