But it is very different with the little boy.  To go down into the fields, with a big stick and a fixed purpose; to cross over the ditches on boards that a few years ago he would not have been allowed to put his foot upon; to take down the bars of the fences, just as if he was a real man, and when he reaches the pasture, to go up to those great cows, and even to the old bull himself, and to shake his stick at them, and shout:  “Go along there, now!”—­these are proud things to do.

And then what a feeling of power it gives him to make those big creatures walk along the very road he chooses for them, and to hurry them up, or let them go slowly, just as he pleases!

If, on the way, a wayward cow should make a sudden incursion over some low bars into a forbidden field, the young director of her evening course is equal to the emergency.

He is over the fence in an instant, and his little legs soon place him before her, and then what are her horns, her threatening countenance, and her great body to his shrill voice and brandished stick?  Admitting his superior power, she soon gallops back to the herd, with whack after whack resounding upon her thick hide.

When at last the great, gentle beasts file, one by one, into the barn-yard, there is a consciousness of having done something very important in the air of the little fellow who brings up the rear of the procession, and who shuts the gate as closely as possible on the heels of the hindmost cow.

There are also many little outside circumstances connected with a small boy’s trip after the cows which make it pleasant to him.  Sometimes there are tremendous bull-frogs in the ditch.  There are ripe wild-cherries—­splendid, bitter, and scarce—­on the tree in the corner of the field.  The pears on the little tree by old Mrs. Hopkins’s don’t draw your mouth up so very much, if you peel the skins off with your knife.  There is always a chance of seeing a rabbit, and although there is no particular chance of getting it, the small boy does not think of that.  Now, although it would hardly be worth while to walk very far for any of these things, they are very pleasant when you are going after the cows.

So I think it is no wonder that the little boys like to go after the cows, and I wish that hundreds and thousands of pale-faced and thin-legged little fellows had cows to go after.

THE REFLECTIVE STAG.

The more we study the habits and natures of animals the more firmly are we convinced that, in many of them, what we call instinct is very much like what we call reason.

In the case of a domestic animal, we may attribute, perhaps, a great deal of its cleverness to its association with man and its capability of receiving instruction.  But wild animals have not the advantages of human companionship, and what they know is due to the strength and quality of their own understanding.  And some of them appear to know a great deal.