In Scotland we had often been admonished to be bold, and this advice we passed on to Jack, who had already got many a wild lesson from Indian boys.  Once, when teaching him to jump muddy streams, I made him try the creek in our meadow at a place where it is about twelve feet wide.  He jumped bravely enough, but came down with a grand splash hardly more than halfway over.  The water was only about a foot in depth, but the black vegetable mud half afloat was unfathomable.  I managed to wallow ashore, but poor Jack sank deeper and deeper until only his head was visible in the black abyss, and his Indian fortitude was desperately tried.  His foundering so suddenly in the treacherous gulf recalled the story of the Abbot of Aberbrothok’s bell, which went down with a gurgling sound while bubbles rose and burst around.  I had to go to father for help.  He tied a long hemp rope brought from Scotland around Jack’s neck, and Tom and Jerry seemed to have all they could do to pull him out.  After which I got a solemn scolding for asking the “puir beast to jump intil sic a saft bottomless place.”

We moved into our frame house in the fall, when mother with the rest of the family arrived from Scotland, and, when the winter snow began to fly, the bur-oak shanty was made into a stable for Jack.  Father told us that good meadow hay was all he required, but we fed him corn, lots of it, and he grew very frisky and fat.  About the middle of winter his long hair was full of dust and, as we thought, required washing.  So, without taking the frosty weather into account, we gave him a thorough soap and water scouring, and as we failed to get him rubbed dry, a row of icicles formed under his belly.  Father happened to see him in this condition and angrily asked what we had been about.  We said Jack was dirty and we had washed him to make him healthy.  He told us we ought to be ashamed of ourselves, “soaking the puir beast in cauld water at this time o’ year”; that when we wanted to clean him we should have sense enough to use the brush and curry-comb.

[Illustration:  Our first Wisconsin home On the hill near the shanty built in the summer of 1849]

In summer Dave or I had to ride after the cows every evening about sundown, and Jack got so accustomed to bringing in the drove that when we happened to be a few minutes late he used to go off alone at the regular time and bring them home at a gallop.  It used to make father very angry to see Jack chasing the cows like a shepherd dog, running from one to the other and giving each a bite on the rump to keep them on the run, flying before him as if pursued by wolves.  Father would declare at times that the wicked beast had the deevil in him and would be the death of the cattle.  The corral and barn were just at the foot of a hill, and he made a great display of the drove on the home stretch as they walloped down that hill with their tails on end.