"Devlin wasn't a bad man, a respected churchman.... I spoke to certain grown-ups, but did not get the sense of tragedy that was mine. No one criticised Devlin. It was the custom, they said.... Even the butcher had heard of old Mary.... You see how ungrippable, how abstract the tragedy was for a child--but you never can know what it showed me of the world. None of us who wept that day ate meat for many days. I have not since. I cannot."
Her story reminded me sharply of a recent personal experience. I had been thinking of buying a cow. It appears that there are milch-cows and beef-cows. Country dealers prefer a blend, as you shall see. I said I wanted butter and milk, intimating the richer the better; also I wanted a front-yard cow, if possible.... There was a gentle little Jersey lady that had eyes the children would see fairies in----
"Yes, she's a nice heifer," the man said, "but now I'm a friend of yours----"
"Well, a cow is like a peach-tree, she doesn't last forever. After the milktime, there isn't much left for beef----"
"But as an investment--you see, that's where the Jerseys fall down--they don't weigh much at the butcher's."
The styles change more slowly in the country.... I found this good economy so prevalent as to be rather high for humour. In fact, that's exactly why you can't get "grand" stakes in the country.... I related the episode to a man interested in the prevention of cruelty. He said:
"Don't blame it all on the country. I saw one of those butcher's abominations in a city street yesterday--cart with crate, new calf inside, old moaning mammy dragged after to the slaughter--a very interesting tumbril, but she hadn't conspired against the government. For a year she had given the best of her body to nourish that little bewildered bit of veal--and now we were to eat what was left of her.... Also I passed through a certain railway yard of a big city last holidays. You recall the zero weather? Tier on tier of crated live chickens were piled there awaiting shipment--crushed into eight-inch crates, so that they could not lift their heads. Poe pictured an atrocious horror like that--a man being held in a torture-cell in such a position that he could not stand erect. It almost broke a man's nerve, to say nothing of his neck, just to read about it.... I had seen this thing before--yet never as this time. Queer how these things happen! A man must see a thing like that just right, in full meaning, and then tell it again and again--until enough others see, to make it dangerous to ship that way. I got the idea then, 'Suppose a man would make it his life-work to change those crates--to make those crates such a stench and abomination, that poultry butchers would not dare use them. What a worthy life work that would be!...' And then I thought, 'Why leave it for the other fellow?...' The personal relation is everything," he concluded.