Hoskins's Cow

Hoskins's cow got into the pound and the notice was tacked on the meetin'-house door:
"Come into my yard, one brindle cow with three white feet, and her shoulders sore,
--Galled by a poke,--and the owner is asked to call at the pound and take her away."
Well, Hoskins knew she was his all right, but, you see, he hadn't wherewith to pay.

The cow was breachy--she wasn't to blame, for Hoskins had turned her abroad to roam;
She had to battle for daily grass, for the bovine cupboard was bare at home.
So Hoskins had hitched on her withered neck a wooden "regalia"--sort of a yoke,
Supposed to keep her from breachy tricks, but the poor old creature employed the "poke"
To rip up fences and let down bars; her hunger sharpened her slender wits,
And somehow she sneaked through the guarded gates, and gave the garden sass regular fits.

The neighbors pitied her starving state, but at last she stubbornly wouldn't shoo;
They pounded tattoos on her skinny ribs till it really seemed they would whack 'em through.
But she got so toughened and callous and hard, and the stiffened frame of her mortised bones
Formed such an excellent armor-plate against the broadsides of sticks and stones,
That they "pounded" her then in a different way--in the village pound--whose walls would hold
The breachiest cow that ever strayed--and the notice was posted as I have told.

She stood there a day and she stayed there a night; she cropped the scanty bushes and grass,
And moo-ed and loo-ed in a yearning way, whenever a person chanced to pass.
--She ate the leaves from some alder sprouts for a scanty breakfast the second day,
And munched the twigs for her dinner, alas, and longed, oh, so much, for some meadow hay.
That night she gnawed at her dry old poke,-- a painful meal, for the slivers ran
In her tongue; so she crouched by the highbarred gate and seemed deserted of God and man.

And Hoskins knew that they had his cow, and
Hoskins knew of her solemn fast,
For he'd gone up the highway and looked through the gate in her dumb, reproachful eyes as he passed.
Yet what, may I ask, could the poor man do?
He was right in a place where he couldn't
Pay,
--He had three dollars, 'tis true enough, and
'twould square the bill, but, you see, that day
The catchers had come and taken his dogs: a hound, a setter, and brindle-pup,
And a man like Hoskins would ne 'er endure to have the dog-pound gobble them up,
For he gunned on Sundays behind the hound, and the bull was entered and backed to fight.
And Hoskins, you see, as a sporting man had a reputation to keep upright.

I wonder, friends, if you've ever thought, while you've stormed at rum as the poor man's curse,
There are chaps so built on the mental plan that keeping dogs will warp them worse?
The "dog" man may be reclaimed, but I've been compelled, alas, to see
That there doesn't appear to be much hope for the wretched critter condemned to three.
And Hoskins's duty was plain to him: his youngsters wailed for the milk they missed,
But Hoskins thought of his poor, poor dogs and gripped his dollars tight in his fist.
He shut his ears to his children's cries, he steeled his heart when he passed the pound,
To the mute appeal in the old cow's eyes; but he smiled at last when his dogs were found.
And he gladly proffered the three lone plunks to sate the greed of the legal hogs,
And proudly he took the highway back, a-leading his licensed, bailed-out dogs.
And they barked and yipped and yapped and yawped at a poor old tottering cow they found
Absorbed in a desperate, hungry reach for a thistle outside the village pound.