Explore "Going after the Cows" by Frank R. Stockton on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
If there is anything which a little country-boy likes, and which a big country-boy dislikes, it is to go after the cows. There is no need of giving the reasons why the big boy does not like this duty. It is enough to say that it is a small boy's business, and the big boy knows it. The excitement of hunting up and driving home a lot of slow, meandering cattle is not sufficient for a mind capable of grappling with the highest grade of agricultural ideas, and the youth who has reached the mature age of fifteen or sixteen is very apt to think that his mind is one of that kind.
But it is very different with the little boy. To go down into the fields, with a big stick and a fixed purpose; to cross over the ditches on boards that a few years ago he would not have been allowed to put his foot upon; to take down the bars of the fences, just as if he was a real man, and when he reaches the pasture, to go up to those great cows, and even to the old bull himself, and to shake his stick at them, and shout: "Go along there, now! " -- these are proud things to do.