and dreamed of, better things--had even known them. But here they were.
This had been their life; this was their career. It was, and in all
probability would be, mine too. My life--my career--my brilliant career!

Weariness! Weariness!

The summer sun danced on. Summer is fiendish, and life is a curse, I said
in my heart. What a great dull hard rock the world was! On it were a few
barren narrow ledges, and on these, by exerting ourselves so that the
force wears off our finger-nails, it allows us to hang for a year or two,
and then hurls us off into outer darkness and oblivion, perhaps to endure
worse torture than this.

The poor beast moaned. The lifting had strained her, and there were
patches of hide worn off her the size of breakfast-plates, sore and most
harrowing to look upon.

It takes great suffering to wring a moan from the patience of a cow. I
turned my head away, and with the impatience and one-sided reasoning
common to fifteen, asked God what He meant by this. It is well enough to
heap suffering on human beings, seeing it is supposed to be merely a
probation for a better world, but animals--poor, innocent animals--why are
they tortured so?

"Come now, we'll lift her once more," said my father. At it we went
again; it is surprising what weight there is in the poorest cow. With
great struggling we got her to her feet once more, and were careful this
time to hold her till she got steady on her legs. Father and mother at
the tail and Blackshaw and I at the horns, we marched her home and gave
her a bran mash. Then we turned to our work in the house while the men