Democratic Sentinel, Volume 17, Number 11, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 31 March 1893 — Singing to the Herd. [ARTICLE]

Singing to the Herd.

Some cowboys and cattlemen laughingly assured me that they only sing on watch to keep themselves awake ; others say they sing, talk loud or make a noise just to let the cattle know they are approaching so as not to frighten and stampede them, but the greater number hold—as I myself had read and been led to believe—that the sound of the human voice, singing, talking or calling out cheerfully, quiets and reassures the animals. However it may be, they all sing and talk or whistle to them, and among my most vivid and picture-like recollections is one of a certain night when an aching head and heavy heart held me awake, and slipping from the house in the little hours, I went aimlessly across the level plain towards where a big herd was camped. When within three or four hundred yards of the bunch I could see, under the white Texas moonlight, the dark mass of cattle and occasionally a silhouette, between me and the sky, of one of the guards on his pony, and in the intense lonliness of the plain’s night the singing of the one boyish voice holding his untaught, unconscious way through “A Fountain Filled With Blood," and the whistling of his companion on a little harmonicum “Sweet Home," as they came round past me in turn, were as lovely and touching sounds as I ever heard.---[Kansas City Times. Amethyst and several other so-called precious stones have become so cheap that they are no loDger sold by the karat, but by the ounce. Even the great amethyst that ordinarily graces an episcopal ring is no longer an expensive stone, and amethysts of poorer quality are ordinarily of trifline value.