nickel apiece. It has ruined me permanently as a shopper for watermelons; nothing makes me feel more abused by the H. C. L. than to try to separate a grocer and his melon.
I seem to have gotten far away from my subject, but, really I am only standing in the brown mallows outside the open end of the wool barn, watching the six horse team start for Wilmington with its load of precious wool that is to be shipped by steamer to “The City,” San Francisco, the one and only of those days.
As soon as the shearing was well under way the dipping began. This was managed by the members of the family and the regular men on the ranch. In the corral east of the barn was the brick fireplace with the big tank on top where the “dip” was brewed, scalding tobacco soup, seasoned with sulphur, and I do not know what else. This mess was served hot in a long, narrow, sunken tub, with a vertical end near the cauldron, and a sloping, cleated floor at the other. Into this steaming bath each sheep was thrown; it must swim fifteen or twenty feet to safety, and during the passage its head was pushed beneath the surface. How glad it must have been when its feet struck bottom at the far end, and it could scramble out to safety. How it shook itself, and what a taste it must have had in its mouth! I am afraid Madam Sheep cherished hard feelings against her universe. She did not know that her over-ruling providence was saving her from the miseries of a bad skin disease.
Now the sheep are all gone, and the shearers and
