But to us the auction reached its climax of interest when we went to the barn.  We were spending our summers in the country, and must have a cow.  There were ten or fifteen sukies to be sold.  There were reds, and piebalds, and duns, and browns, and brindles, short horns, long horns, crumpled horns and no horns.  But we marked for our own a cow that was said to be full-blooded, whether Alderney, or Durham, or Galloway, or Ayrshire, I will not tell lest some cattle fancier feel insulted by what I say; and if there is any grace that I pride myself on, it is prudence and a determination always to say smooth things.  “How much is bid for this magnificent, full-blooded cow?” cried the auctioneer.  “Seventy-five dollars,” shouted some one.  I made it eighty.  He made it ninety.  Somebody else quickly made it a hundred.  After the bids had risen to one hundred and twenty-five dollars, I got animated, and resolved that I would have that cow if it took my last cent.  “One hundred and forty dollars,” shouted my opponent.  The auctioneer said it was the finest cow he had ever sold; and not knowing much about vendues, of course I believed him.  It was a good deal of money for a minister to pay, but then I could get the whole matter off my hands by giving “a note.”  In utter defiance of everything I cried out, “One hundred and fifty dollars!” “Going at that,” said the auctioneer.  “Going at that! once! twice! three times! gone!  Mr. Talmage has it.”  It was one of the proudest moments of our life.  There she stood, tall, immense in the girth, horns branching graceful as a tree branch, full-uddered, silk-coated, pensive-eyed.

We hired two boys to drive her home while we rode in a carriage.  No sooner had we started than the cow showed what turned out to be one of her peculiarities, great speed of hoof.  She left the boys, outran my horse, jumped the fence, frightened nearly to death a group of schoolchildren, and by the time we got home we all felt as if we had all day been put on a fox-chase.

We never had any peace with that cow.  She knew more tricks than a juggler.  She could let down any bars, open any gate, outrun any dog and ruin the patience of any minister.  We had her a year, and yet she never got over wanting to go to the vendue.  Once started out of the yard, she was bound to see the sheriff.  We coaxed her with carrots, and apples, and cabbage, and sweetest stalks, and the richest beverage of slops, but without avail.

As a milker she was a failure.  “Mike,” who lived just back of our place, would come in at nights from his “Kerry cow,” a scraggly runt that lived on the commons, with his pail so full he had to carry it cautiously lest it spill over.  But after our full-blooded had been in clover to her eyes all day, Bridget would go out to the barnyard, and tug and pull for a supply enough to make two or three custards.  I said, “Bridget, you don’t know how to milk.  Let me try.”  I sat down by the cow, tried the full force of dynamics, but just at the moment when my success was about to be demonstrated, a sudden thought took her somewhere between the horns, and she started for the vendue, with one stroke of her back foot upsetting the small treasure I had accumulated, and leaving me a mere wreck of what I once was.