good parson's _dot_, and which his wife had already caused to be
conveyed to his new home, was a patent cast-iron pump, about seven feet
high. This had been deposited near the barn-yard, preparatory to being
set up on the planks above the barn-yard well. Mr. Huggins now sought
out this invention and conveying it to its destination put it into
position, screwing it firmly to the planks. He next divested himself of
his long gaberdine and his hat, buttoning the former loosely about the
pump, which it almost concealed, and hanging the latter upon the summit
of the structure. The handle of the pump, when depressed, curved
outwardly between the coat-skirts, singularly like a tail, but with this
inconspicuous exception, any unprejudiced observer would have pronounced
the thing Mr. Huggins, looking uncommonly well.

The preliminaries completed, the good man carefully closed the gate of
the barnyard, knowing that as soon as Phoebe, who was campaigning in the
kitchen garden, should note the precaution she would come and jump in to
frustrate it, which eventually she did. Her master, meanwhile, had laid
himself, coatless and hatless, along the outside of the close board
fence, where he put in the time pleasantly, catching his death of cold
and peering through a knot-hole.

At first, and for some time, the animal pretended not to see the figure
on the platform. Indeed she had turned her back upon it directly she
arrived, affecting a light sleep. Finding that this stratagem did not
achieve the success that she had expected, she abandoned it and stood
for several minutes irresolute, munching her cud in a half-hearted way,
but obviously thinking very hard. Then she began nosing along the ground
as if wholly absorbed in a search for something that she had lost,
tacking about hither and thither, but all the time drawing nearer to the
object of her wicked intention. Arrived within speaking distance, she
stood for a little while confronting the fraudful figure, then put out
her nose toward it, as if to be caressed, trying to create the
impression that fondling and dalliance were more to her than wealth,
power and the plaudits of the populace--that she had been accustomed to
them all her sweet young life and could not get on without them. Then
she approached a little nearer, as if to shake hands, all the while
maintaining the most amiable expression of countenance and executing all
manner of seductive nods and winks and smiles. Suddenly she wheeled
about and with the rapidity of lightning dealt out a terrible kick--a
kick of inconceivable force and fury, comparable to nothing in nature
but a stroke of paralysis out of a clear sky!

The effect was magical! Cows kick, not backward but sidewise. The impact
which was intended to project the counterfeit theologian into the middle
of the succeeding conference week reacted upon the animal herself, and
it and the pain together set her spinning like a top. Such was the
velocity of her revolution that she looked like a dim, circular cow,
surrounded by a continuous ring like that of the planet Saturn--the
white tuft at the extremity of her sweeping tail! Presently, as the
sustaining centrifugal force lessened and failed, she began to sway and
wabble from side to side, and finally, toppling over on her side, rolled
convulsively on her back and lay motionless with all her feet in the
air, honestly believing that the world had somehow got atop of her and
she was supporting it at a great sacrifice of personal comfort. Then she
fainted.

How long she lay unconscious she knew not, but at last she unclosed her
eyes, and catching sight of the open door of her stall, "more sweet than
all the landscape smiling near," she struggled up, stood wavering upon
three legs, rubbed her eyes, and was visibly bewildered as to the points
of the compass. Observing the iron clergyman standing fast by its faith,
she threw it a look of grieved reproach and hobbled heart-broken into
her humble habitation, a subjugated cow.

For several weeks Phoebe's right hind leg was swollen to a monstrous
growth, but by a season of judicious nursing she was "brought round all
right," as her sympathetic and puzzled mistress phrased it, or "made
whole," as the reticent man of God preferred to say. She was now as
tractable and inoffensive "in her daily walk and conversation" (Huggins)
as a little child. Her new master used to take her ailing leg trustfully
into his lap, and for that matter, might have taken it into his mouth if
he had so desired. Her entire character appeared to be radically
changed--so altered that one day my Aunt Patience, who, fondly as she
loved her, had never before so much as ventured to touch the hem of her
garment, as it were, went confidently up to her to soothe her with a pan
of turnips. Gad! how thinly she spread out that good old lady upon the
face of an adjacent stone wall! You could not have done it so evenly
with a trowel.




A REVOLT OF THE GODS


My father was a deodorizer of dead dogs, my mother kept the only shop
for the sale of cats'-meat in my native city. They did not live happily;
the difference in social rank was a chasm which could not be bridged by
the vows of marriage. It was indeed an ill-assorted and most unlucky
alliance; and as might have been foreseen it ended in disaster. One
morning after the customary squabbles at breakfast, my father rose from
the table, quivering and pale with wrath, and proceeding to the
parsonage thrashed the clergyman who had performed the marriage
ceremony. The act was generally condemned and public feeling ran so high
against the offender that people would permit dead dogs to lie on their
property until the fragrance was deafening rather than employ him; and
the municipal authorities suffered one bloated old mastiff to utter
itself from a public square in so clamorous an exhalation that passing
strangers supposed themselves to be in the vicinity of a saw-mill. My
father was indeed unpopular. During these dark days the family's sole