The next thing to being buried alive is to have the sheriff sell you out when you have been honest and have tried always to do right.

There are so many envious ones to chuckle at your fall, and come in to buy your carriage, blessing the Lord that the time has come for you to walk and for them to ride.
But to us the auction reached its climax of interest when we went to the barn.

We were spending our summers in the country, and must have a cow.
There were ten or fifteen sukies to be sold.

There were reds, and piebalds, and duns, and browns, and brindles, short horns, long horns, crumpled horns and no horns.

But we marked for our own a cow that was said to be full-blooded, whether Alderney, or Durham, or Galloway, or Ayrshire, I will not tell lest some cattle fancier feel insulted by what I say; and if there is any grace that I pride myself on, it is prudence and a determination always to say smooth things.