Worcester daily spy. [volume] (Worcester [Mass.]) 1850-1888, 1859-06-27
A cow.
AS DESCRIBED BY HENRY WARD BEEoHER IN THE INDE
PENDENT.


A COW is the saint of the BARNARD. Not
one of those final saints, who are born afar
of from goodness and fight their way to it :;
but one OF those mild, meek, harmless, natur-
al saints. If LONELINESS is necessary to good
ness, land there is a strong presumption for
the theory a COW has this prime qualification
For nothing can well be more devoid of beau
ty than genuine mixer. There is not one
line of beauty. There is not one limb that
seems to have regard for another. The mus
Giles are thin, the shoulders and neck flat and
poor, she hind quarters wide across and gaunt
and the whole form is meager' lathy, and pow
erty stricken But when we reflect that this
comes from a cows benevolence, and that she
eats, Eliminates, digests, and in short, lives,
for the sake of others, our sense of her benev
olence at length clothes her with a kind of
moral beauty. She could be fat if she could
only be selfish. But she economies beauty
that she may be profuse in milk Blessed
saint! And yet, i'll all the symbolism of
saints, we do not remember single instance
in which the cow is advanced to signify any,
thing in holy figure. Bulls and oxen sheen
and lambs, and holy rams abound in pictorial
legends. Lions and bears, dragons and eagles,
serpents, bees, doves in endless repetition,
stays, horses, growing cocks, falcons, ravens,
wild geese, fish, dogs, and wild boars, and we
swim, or fly, or walk, or creep, have been
made glorious in stone, and wood, and paint,
for some sake or other of the great multitude
of saints whom the books record. But this
noblest symbol of all, the very ideal and pat
tern OF saint, who is as poor as if living
life enumeration, who gives her whole strength
TO tactical benevolence, who is patient gentle,
guileless, contented-and yet, with two excep-
lions, no saint can be found (by us, at leastl
with COW. These two saints are, St. Elo
and st. Perpetua. The second has wild cows
by her side, and the first has cows with oxen
about her. Let dairymen pay respect to the
shadowy memory Of ST. Ello and st. Per-
petua
If l were to speak of the musical voice of
COW, people would laugh. But the sound will
depend upon circumstances. Let man be
lost in the woods, and suffer the terrible excite
ment which comes with the first flash of con-
viction that he is lost let him dash wildly
forth, and after an hours running and hoarse
hallooing, find that he has only swept circle
and come back to the very spot from which he
started let him, toward the going down of
the sun, weary, tamished, and yet wandering
hear the low of cows not far off No trumpet
was ever so sweet on the march, and no lutte
ever charmed a lover with more delight than
this uplifted sound Of COW to a woodstock
man. And when, running to the sound, he
comes out near some farmhouse, if tears gush,
and he would fain even throw his arms around
the neck of homely old brindle, let no one
laugh or deride. Go and try the experiment,
and see if you would not do it yourself Be-
sides, the face Of a COW is handsome. 1t is the
only thing about her that is beautiful, except
by association
But we need not go to all the trouble of be-
ing lost to reach the conclusion that a cow
has musical voice. Sitting on Summer
evening on the sward, under the high pendant
elms, only enough conscious of being in the
body to receive through it the most ineffabIe
sense of the beauty of sights and sounds, and
then, while birds are carrying the alto, and
bees are making tenor, let the long and repeat
ed low of cows coming home, and longing for
their calves, rise as bass, and tell me whether
COW has not musical voice
If one is Of devout turn, and would like
some Scriptural associations, we can almost
give MIN some. For, although oxen it was
that were about the manger, according to all
pictures, yet COWS are the mothers of oxen.
We read, too, in Scripture of "the pure milk
of the Word" and the qualifying adjective
would seem to imply that teachers in those
DAYS initiated the milkmen of ours, and gave a
diluted article. From this great company of
patient creatures, let us mention few more
eminent, such as st. Attorney, st. Ayrshire,
st. Durham and st. Homebreed. These are
the most iustrious of milk-saints. But good
ness is not confined to any of these denomina-
tons. There are capacious udders, patient
dispositions, mild-eyed mothers, home-loving,
and pasturebrowsing saints, without name
and fame, in every neighborhood