[Illustration: "I WILL SIT ON THE STILE, AND CONTINUE TO SMILE."]
What could he do? He was a short, stout old man, and could not run very
fast, and, though he tried his best, he only just managed to reach the
stile and plump down on it, all out of breath, as the cow neared him.
Then he suddenly remembered reading somewhere that if you looked right
into an animal's eyes, it would run away from you.
"Ah!" thought he, "I'll look straight at her, and if I smile at the
same time, she wont have the heart to hurt me."
So he put on a smile (of course it was not a very beautiful one, for he
was in a hurry, but it was the best he could do), and stared straight
into the cow's eyes. She saw that smile, and it so touched her that she
stopped short. Then she sauntered back a little way, but the thought of
that aggravating fly, and that awful frog, was too much for her poor
nerves, and turning around, she dashed madly on again.
In another minute, the poor old man--cane, little legs, smile and
all--was up in the air.
He alighted in the top of a hickory-tree. One branch grazed his eye,
two ran into his legs, while another held his smile stiff and straight.
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