"
"How many head did you formerly sell in a year?"
"About thirty."
"How many do you now sell?"
"Though for some years I have not sold more than nine or ten, I expect
to exceed that number in another year."
"Which you expect will yield you more than the thirty did formerly?"
"Certainly; because such meat as mine commands an extraordinary price."
"So long," replied the Brahmin, "as this is novelty, you may receive a
part of the price which men are ever ready to pay for it; but as soon as
others profit by your example, your meat falls to the ordinary rate, and
then, if I understand you aright, as you will have somewhat less in
quantity than you formerly had, your gross receipts will be less, to say
nothing of your additional labour and expense."
"But who has the skill," quickly rejoined the other, "of which I can
boast? and who would take the same trouble, although they had
the skill?"
"But stop here a moment," said our host, "till I go to see how my last
improved oil-cake is relished by my cattle."
The Brahmin then turning to me, said,--"This gentleman may, indeed,
improve his fortune by the business of a grazier; but the same pains and
unremitting attention would always be sure of a liberal reward, though
the system on which they were exerted was not among the best. Nothing,
my dear Atterley, is more true than the saying of your wise book--_that
all flesh is grass;_ and it always takes the same quantity of one to
make a given quantity of the other, whether that given quantity may be
in the form of a single individual, or two or three.
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