The other day I had just planted my celluloid radishes and irrigated my turnips and sown my hunting-case summer squashes, and this cow went by trying to convey the impression that she was out for a walk.

That night the blow fell. The queen of night was high in the blue vault of heaven amid the twinkling stars. All nature was hushed to repose. The people of Laramie were in their beds. So were my hunting-case summer squashes. I heard a stealthy step near the conservatory where my celluloid radishes and pickled beets are growing, and I arose.

It was a lovely sight. At the head of the procession there was a seal-brown cow with a tail like the handle on a pump, and standing at an angle of forty-five degrees.

That was the cow.

Following at a rapid gait was a bewitching picture of alabaster limbs and Gothic joints and Wamsutta muslin night robe.

That was me.

The queen of night withdrew behind a cloud.

The vision seemed to break her all up.

Bye-and-bye there was a crash, and the seal-brown cow went home carrying the garden gate with her as a kind of keepsake. She had a plenty of garden gates at home in her collection, but she had none of that particular pattern. So she wore it home around her neck.

The writer of these lines then carefully brushed the sand off his feet with a pillow sham and retired to rest.

When the bright May morn was ushered in upon the busy world the radish and squash bed had melted into chaos and there only remained some sticks of stove wood and the tracks of a cow, interspersed with the dainty little footprints of some Peri or other who evidently stepped about four yards at a lick, and could wear a number nine shoe if necessary.

Yesterday morning it was very cold, and when I went out to feed my royal self-acting hen, I found this same cow wedged into the hen coop. O, blessed opportunity! O, thrice blessed and long-sought revenge!

Now I had her where she could not back out, and I secured a large picket from the fence, and took my coat off, and breathed in a full breath. I did not want to kill her, I simply wanted to make her wish that she had died of membranous croup when she was young.

While I was spitting on my hands she seemed to catch my idea, but she saw how hopeless was her position. I brought down the picket with the condensed strength and eagerness and wrath of two long, suffering years. It struck the corner of the hen-house. There was a deafening crash and then all was still, save the low, rippling laugh of the cow, as she stood in the alley and encouraged me while I nailed up the hen-house again.

Looking back over my whole life, it seems to me that it is strewn with nothing but the rugged ruins of my busted anticipations.