The Memoirs of a Swine in the Land of Kultur

But I made display of enough of my ignorance without these special inducements. One day I think I made a blunder of quite everything which was given me to do. Besides such minor offences as putting the wrong harness on the horse and tying the cows in the wrong stalls, I spilled a sack of oats, broke a window-pane in the barn and buried a young turkey beneath a fork-full of manure—all in one day! At first Erna scolded sharply, but finding me quite hopeless, she seemed finally to give me up and simply trust to luck that I would leave the house standing and some of the stock alive at the end of this “perfect day.” She did, however, regard me with such a horribly disgusted look that, had I not been so “fed up” and disgusted myself, I would have had grave misgivings for my future.