WHEN the writer was a boy, maybe fourteen or fifteen years old, my Father owned a nice fat little steer that left home and took up at Enos Jones and my Father wanted him for beef and he told me to go and put a rope halter on him and fetch him home. I went and got him in the stable, made a halter and put it on him and when about half-way home he got unruly, the halter slipped off, and he broke to go back, but I was a good runner, was barefooted, and I headed him; then he took the road for William Sullivan’s, and there was a race, he went straight for the house. Mr. Sullivan had four daughters and I was very bashful, and he also had two big dogs of whom I was afraid, but I could not afford to lose my steer; over the fence he went and I at his heels, one big dog came running around one corner of the house from one way and the other dog from the other way, and made at the steer, they had him between them; both doors of the house were open, the women were engaged in quilting and were not apprised of our arrival, and the first they knew we went in at the door, turned the table over on the cat, while as he went in at the door I caught him by the tail and as he went out at the other door, I fetched a yank to the North, which he was not expecting, thus throwing him flat against the wall, then he bellowed as loud as he could; then the women wanted to kill me and the steer too for scareing them so bad; I was hot and scared too, but I tied my steer to a tree, took off my hat, backed up in the shade of a tree, made a long speech upon the short-comings of steers and dogs, and that boys were no better; they all listened and when they got to laughing, we grew eloquent and used big words and lots of them, while they got to clapping their hands and laughing big and loud I left them in fine humor.