Nob was doomed. We bathed her head
and tried to get her to eat something, but she couldn't eat, and in
about a couple of weeks we turned her loose to let her come around the
house and see us in the weary suffering and loneliness of the shadow
of death. She tried to follow us children, so long her friends and
workmates and playmates. It was awfully touching. She had several
hemorrhages, and in the forenoon of her last day, after she had had
one of her dreadful spells of bleeding and gasping for breath, she
came to me trembling, with beseeching, heartbreaking looks, and after
I had bathed her head and tried to soothe and pet her, she lay down
and gasped and died. All the family gathered about her, weeping, with
aching hearts. Then dust to dust.
She was the most faithful, intelligent, playful, affectionate,
human-like horse I ever knew, and she won all our hearts. Of the many
advantages of farm life for boys one of the greatest is the gaining a
real knowledge of animals as fellow-mortals, learning to respect them
and love them, and even to win some of their love.
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