Page:Letters from a Self-Made Merchant to His Son.djvu/118

Rh between a cow that's a kicker, but whose intentions are good if she's approached with proper respect, and a hooker, who is vicious on general principles, and any way you come at her. There's never any use fooling with an animal of that sort, brute or human. The only safe place is the other side of the fence or the top of the nearest tree.

When I was clerking in Missouri, a fellow named Jeff Hankins moved down from Wisconsin and bought a little clearing just outside the town. Jeff was a good talker, but a bad listener, and so we learned a heap about how things were done in Wisconsin, but he didn't pick up much information about the habits of our Missouri fauna, When it came to cows, he had had a liberal education and he made out all right, but by and by it got on to ploughing time and Jeff naturally bought a mule—a little moth-eaten cuss, with sad, dreamy eyes and droopy, wiggly-woggly ears that swung in a circle as easy