The first notice that he took of me when I was a little puppy, just able to stagger about, was to give me a kick that sent me into a corner of the stable.  He used to beat and starve my mother.  I have seen him use his heavy whip to punish her till her body was covered with blood.  When I got older I asked her why she did not run away.  She said she did not wish to; but I soon found out that the reason she did not run away, was because she loved Jenkins.  Cruel and savage as he was, she yet loved him, and I believe she would have laid down her life for him.

Now that I am old, I know that there are more men in the world like Jenkins.  They are not crazy, they are not drunkards; they simply seem to be possessed with a spirit of wickedness.  There are well-to-do people, yes, and rich people, who will treat animals, and even little children, with such terrible cruelty, that one cannot even mention the things that they are guilty of.

One reason for Jenkins’ cruelty was his idleness.  After he went his rounds in the morning with his milk cans, he had nothing to do till late in the afternoon but take care of his stable and yard.  If he had kept them neat, and groomed his horse, and cleaned the cows, and dug up the garden, it would have taken up all his time; but he never tidied the place at all, till his yard and stable got so littered up with things he threw down that he could not make his way about.

His house and stable stood in the middle of a large field, and they were at some distance from the road.  Passers-by could not see how untidy the place was.  Occasionally, a man came to look at the premises, and see that they were in good order, but Jenkins always knew when to expect him, and had things cleaned up a little.

I used to wish that some of the people that took milk from him would come and look at his cows.  In the spring and summer he drove them out to pasture, but during the winter they stood all the time in the dirty, dark stable, where the chinks in the wall were so big that the snow swept through almost in drifts.  The ground was always muddy and wet; there was only one small window on the north side, where the sun only shone in for a short time in the afternoon.

They were very unhappy cows, but they stood patiently and never complained, though sometimes I know they must have nearly frozen in the bitter winds that blew through the stable on winter nights.  They were lean and poor, and were never in good health.  Besides being cold they were fed on very poor food.

Jenkins used to come home nearly every afternoon with a great tub in the back of his cart that was full of what he called “peelings.”  It was kitchen stuff that he asked the cooks at the different houses where he delivered milk, to save for him.  They threw rotten vegetables, fruit parings, and scraps from the table into a tub, and gave them to him at the end of a few days.  A sour, nasty mess it always was, and not fit to give any creature.