Formerly so kind and gentle with animals, now he was the reverse.

His cruelty to the young cows and want of patience with them I can never
forget. It has often brought upon me the threat of immediate
extermination for volunteering scathing and undesired opinions on his
conduct.

The part of the dairying that he positively gloried in was going to town
with the butter. He frequently remained in for two or three days, as
often as not spending all the money he got for the butter in a drunken
spree. Then he would return to curse his luck because his dairy did not
pay as well as those of some of our neighbours.

The curse of Eve being upon my poor mother in those days, she was unable
to follow her husband. Pride forbade her appealing to her neighbours, so
on me devolved the duty of tracking my father from one pub to another and
bringing him home.

Had I done justice to my mother's training I would have honoured my
paternal parent in spite of all this, but I am an individual ever doing
things I oughtn't at the time I shouldn't.

Coming home, often after midnight, with my drunken father talking maudlin
conceited nonsense beside me, I developed curious ideas on the fifth
commandment. Those journeys in the spring-cart through the soft faint
starlight were conducive to thought. My father, like most men when under
the influence of liquor, would allow no one but himself to handle the
reins, and he was often so incapable that he would keep turning the horse
round and round in the one place. It is a marvel we never met with an
accident. I was not nervous, but quite content to take whatever came, and