"I herded sheep for five days on the Rancho Chiquito; and then the wool entered my soul. That getting next to Nature certainly got next to me. I was lonesomer than Crusoe''s goat. I''ve seen a lot of persons more entertaining as companions than those sheep were. I''d drive ''em to the corral and pen ''em every evening, and then cook my corn-bread and mutton and coffee, and lie down in a tent the size of a table-cloth, and listen to the coyotes and whippoorwills singing around the camp.
"The fifth evening, after I had corralled my costly but uncongenial muttons, I walked over to the ranch-house and stepped in the door.
"''Mr. Ogden,'' says I, ''you and me have got to get sociable. Sheep are all very well to dot the landscape and furnish eight-dollar cotton suitings for man, but for table-talk and fireside companions they rank along with five-o''clock teazers. If you''ve got a deck of cards, or a parcheesi outfit, or a game of authors, get ''em out, and let''s get on a mental basis. I''ve got to do something in an intellectual line, if it''s only to knock somebody''s brains out.''
"This Henry Ogden was a peculiar kind of ranchman. He wore finger- rings and a big gold watch and careful neckties. And his face was calm, and his nose-spectacles was kept very shiny. I saw once, in Muscogee, an outlaw hung for murdering six men, who was a dead ringer for him. But I knew a preacher in Arkansas that you would have taken to be his brother. I didn''t care much for him either way; what I wanted was some fellowship and communion with holy saints or lost sinners--anything sheepless would do.→思→兔→在→線→閱→讀→