Evening Republican, Volume 16, Number 308, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 28 December 1912 — The Pastoral Zoo. [ARTICLE]

The Pastoral Zoo.

(Contributed by Wm. E. Barton.) Some time ago an Episcopal rector in Delaware printed in his church paper a short article entitled “Pastoral Perplexities.” His perplexities were zoological . He hardly, knew how to classify his flock with reference to his duties as pastor. I had a letter some time ago asking if I had seen’that article, and if so, whether I would either print or mail it. I did not have it then and have forgotten who it was who wanted it; but now it comes to my hand, and I will append it to this present article. It is very interesting to note how men have claimed kinship with animals. They have not been content to pet them, but have made themselves blood relations. This fact lies at the basis of several important sciences, and has its bearing upon religion. We know, for instance, that the animal worship of Egypt was not wholly what we would call worship. The men who bowed dowm to bulls and eats and bugs did not merely worship the veritable bodies and souls of particular bulls and cats and bugs, but expressed in part their sense of kinship. Totemism. Totemism seems to have entered in some measure into many kinds of faith and to have left survivals in various forms of sacrifice. The man who could redeem his own life by substituting a sheep, established in the act, or recognized a relation already existing by which there obtained some element of sympathy and possibly of kinship. This was not always so, for sacrifices were very various; but it w r as partly so. The science of heraldry is a sort of middle-age totemism. The family that chose as its crest the head of a boar, or the rampant form of a lion, did, in its own way, what the Alaska Indian did in his when he erected the totem pole before his Jiut. Nations do the same. The American eagle, the Russian bear, the British lion, the French cock, are all more or less tdtemistic.

Political Menagerie. In politics we always have a zoo. The Democratic donkey, the Republican elephant and the Prohibition camel arc more or less stable figures. But besides these we have the more evanescent? types, as the hound dog, and the bull moose. Mascots represent a form of totemism. A college that will howl itself mad over a goat or a yellow dog is not so lacking in civilization as it seems. The boys have simply not outgrown their primitive worship of dumb beasts. The article of which I spoke is not totemistic. The author is giving no academic address on the origins and relations of the species. He is merely telling about his zoo. And the zoo is so common in respectable circles, in heralry, in art, in studies affected by the first families, in politics and even in religion, that there may just possibly be some readers who will be glad to read the following, which, I believe, appeared in the Delaware Churchman, though it comes t;o me typewritten, and not credited to anybody. I do not know the author; I only know that it was not I. Pastoral Perplexities.

“I am a shepherd of a little parochial flock. I have tended other flocks, both as under shepherd in a city and as ruling shepherd in a town; but never before have I known one containing so many heterogenous elements as the one I have at present. Years ago I had lessons in pastoral care. No man ever undertook pastoral work with better theories of sheep-culture than I. In fact, in all ordinary dealings with sheep and goats, I believe I can do as well as the next man. “I know their nature, their habits, .their needs, and have learned to Adapt myself to all conventional idiosyncrasies; I can do any thing that is according to rule. I have all the latest novelties of an institu-tional-fold, every organization intended to benefit the various members of a normal flock, a Little Lambs’ Lullaby Library, a Young Rams’ and He-Goats’ Association and Auxiliary for Aged Ewes, a Guild fftr Giddy „Goats, a EweFrifindlv Society, a Butt6rs* K iv% XII f_7 O X 1 IOiIVAXT Wv V* Vi vj yu Brigade and a flourishing chapter of the Brotherhood of Belwethers. All this sort of thing I understand perfectly well. I have my sheep and goats classified and organized; and they all fit in well into the orderly system of my fold. “But what puzzles me is to apply even the most approved principles of sheep-culture to the care of animals which are not Sheep. For a long time I was distressed at my inability to deal Successfully with some strange creatures I found in my fold, which were all legs and were always kicking. I tried every method known to the science of pastoral theology for dealing with erratic sheep or refractory goats; but my efforts led to no satisfactory result. My amazement at fny inexplicable failure was quite as great as my sorrow. At last it dawned on my dazed mind that I was not dealing with sheep, but with kangaroos. Now what is a shepherd to do with the kangaroos of a flock? There is perplexity Number L “Then again in my dealings with ewes, I have found creatures which spit and scratch in a most unewelike fashion. What is a shepherd