And he is big as a young eliphant too, eats as much as a cow, and of all the lazy critters I ever did see, he is the cap sheaf. Why, when Josiah sets him on to the hens, he has to take him by the collar and kinder draws him along, all the way. And as for cows and calves, he seems to be afraid of ’em, somethin’ kinder constitutionel Josiah says. I tell him he might better bark ’em off himself, especially as he is a first rate hand at it, you can’t tell him from a dog when he sets out.
One mornin’ I says to him, “Josiah Allen, what’s the use of your keepin’ that pup?”
Says he “Samantha, he is a good feller, if I will kinder run ahead of him, and keep between him and the cows, he will go on to them first rate, he seems to want encouragement.”
“Encouragement!” says I, “I should think as much.”
I didn’t say no more, and that very day the axident happened. Josiah heard me holler, and he come runnin’ from the barn--and a scairter man I never see. He took me right up, and was carryin’ of me in. I was in awful agony--and the first words I remember sayin’ was these, in a faint voice.
Says he firmly, yet with pity, and with pale and anxious face.
Says I deliriously, “Did you expect I was goin’ to carry him in my arms and throw him at the hens? I tried every other way.”
“Wall, wall!” says he, kinder soothin’ly, “Do keep still, how do you expect I’m goin’ to carry you if you touse round so.”
He laid me down on the lounge in the settin’ room, and I never got off of it, for two weeks. Fever set in--I had been kinder unwell for quite a spell, but I wouldn’t give up. I would keep ’round to work. But this axident seemed to be the last hump on the camel’s back, I had to give in, and Tirzah Ann had to come home from school to do the work.
When the news got out that I was sick, lots of folks came to see me. And every one wanted me to take some different kinds of patented medicine, or herb drink--why my stomach would have been drounded out, a perfect wreck--if I had took half. And then every one would name my desease some new name. Why I told Josiah at the end of the week, that accordin’ to their tell, I had got every desease under the sun, unless it was the horse distemper.
One mornin’ Miss Gowdey came in, and asked me in a melancholy way, if I had ever had the kind pox. I told her I had.