"I was delighted. I went directly to the pen, and gazed benevolently at the calf. The little imp was blacker, if possible, than its mother. There was that same peculiar look also in its eyes. 'You're all hers!' I joyfully cried, 'you are your mother's own child!' I seized hold of the neck-rope. I opened the pen-door and I went out through that door quicker than a vagrant cat ever got round a corner of a house where a Scotch terrier boards. The calf went under the cow and I struck her, head on. But I had come to stay. I grabbed the pail with one hand and a teat with the other. I tugged it, pulled it, twisted it. Not a drop could I start. A suction pump of twenty horse-power would have found it drier than Sahara, and all the while the calf's mouth, on the other side, was actually running over with milk! In two minutes he looked like a black watermelon. Then the cow, with a kind of back action, suddenly reached out one foot, and when I came to I found myself facing a mulberry tree, with one leg on each side of it. [Illustration: "AND WHEN I CAME DOWN."] "By this time I had reached a decision, and I had the courage of my convictions. I felt it to be my duty to milk that cow. I reminded her in plain, straightforward language that I was the son of a deacon, and that she'd find it out before she got through with me. I assured her that I understood the beauty of righteousness, and that I held a strong hand--a straight flush, as it were. I was well aware that the metaphor was somewhat mixed; but it expressed my sentiments and relieved my feelings, and so I fired it at her point-blank. She snorted and pawed and bellowed, and swore at me in cow-language, but I didn't care for that. So I shook the old, battered milk-pail in her face, and told her I was born in Connecticut, and did business on spot-cash principle; and that she would know more of the commandments than any cow of her color in Texas, before we said our long farewell.