“Love's Labour Lost.”
Joab was a beef, who was tired of being courted
for his clean, smooth skin. So he backed through
a narrow gateway six or eight times, which made
his hair stand the wrong way. He then went and
rubbed his fat sides against a charred log. This
made him look untidy. You never looked worse
in your life than Joab did.
“Now,” said he, “I shall be loved for myself
alone. I will change my name, and hie me to
pastures new, and all the affection that is then
lavished upon me will be pure and disinterested.”
So he strayed off into the woods and came out
at old Abner Davis' ranch. The two things Abner
valued most were a windmill and a scratching-post
for hogs. They were equally beautiful, and the
fame of their comeliness had gone widely abroad.
To them Joab naturally paid his attention. The
windmill, who was called Lucille Ashtonbury Clifford,
received him with expressions of the liveliest
disgust. His protestations of affection were met by
creakings of contempt, and as he turned sadly away
he was rewarded by a sound spank from one of her
fans. Like a gentlemanly beef he did not deign to
avenge the insult by overturning Lucille Ashtonbury;
and it is well for him that he did not, for
old Abner stood by with a pitchfork and a trinity
of dogs.
Disgusted with the selfish heartlessness of society,
Joab shambled off and was passing the scratching-post
without noticing her. (Her name was Arabella
Cliftonbury Howard.) Suddenly she kicked away
a multitude of pigs who were at her feet, and called
to the rolling beef of uncanny exterior:
“Comeer!”
Joab paused, looked at her with his ox-eyes, and
gravely marching up, commenced a vigorous scratching
against her.
“Arabella,” said he, “do you think you could
love a shaggy-hided beef with black hair? Could
you love him for himself alone?”
Arabella had observed that the black rubbed off,
and the hair lay sleek when stroked the right way.
“Yes, I think so; could you?”
This was a poser: Joab had expected her to talk
business. He did not reply. It was only her arch
way; she thought, naturally, that the best way to
win any body's love was to be a fool. She saw her
mistake. She had associated with hogs all her life,
and this fellow was a beef! Mistakes must be
rectified very speedily in these matters.
“Sir, I have for you a peculiar feeling; I may
say a tenderness. Hereafter you, and you only,
shall scratch against Arabella Cliftonbury Howard!”
Joab was delighted; he stayed and scratched all
day. He was loved for himself alone, and he did
not care for anything but that. Then he went
home, made an elaborate toilet, and returned to
astonish her. Alas! old Abner had been about,
and seeing how Joab had worn her smooth and
useless, had cut her down for firewood. Joab
gave one glance, then walked solemnly away into a
“clearing,” and getting comfortably astride a blazing
heap of logs, made a barbacue of himself!
After all, Lucille Ashtonbury Clifford, the light-headed
windmill, seems to have got the best of all
this. I have observed that the light-headed commonly
get the best of everything in this world;
which the wooden-headed and the beef-headed
regard as an outrage. I am not prepared to say if
it is or not.
