Our young people were very anxious to add some rabbits to their playthings, and as we always like to encourage a love of animals in children, we consented that they should become the fortunate share-holders in a doe and six young ones. These were bought early in September, and, as long as the weather would allow, the children used to take them food; by and by, however, one died, and then came the complaint that Master Harry had killed it by giving it too much green meat. The young gentleman was thereupon commanded not to meddle with them for the future, but the rabbits did not derive any benefit from his obedience; two or three times weekly we heard of deaths taking place in the hutch, till at last the whole half-dozen, with their mamma, reposed under the large walnut-tree.

One day the lad who had attended to them knocked at the drawing-room door, and on entering with a large basket, drew from it a most beautiful black-and-white doe, and held it up before our admiring eyes; this was followed by the display of seven young ones, as pretty as the mother.

“Please, ma’am,” said Tom, “these are the kind of rabbits you ought to have bought. My brother keeps rabbits, and these are some of his; I’ll warrant they won’t die!”

Willing once more to gratify the children, as well as to solve the enigma of whether it must be inevitable to lose by keeping these animal, we became the possessors of these superior creatures, with the understanding that no one was to have anything to do with them but Tom, the said Tom saying, with perfect confidence, that “he would ‘warrant’ they should weigh five pounds each in six weeks.”

Not being learned in rabbits, we trusted to his experience and promises that we should always from that have a brace for the table whenever we wished for them. What was our disappointment, then, when a week after we heard of the death of one of them! This was soon followed by another, and another, till the whole seven little “bunnies” shared the grave under the walnut-tree, and in a day or two the doe likewise departed: I concluded she died of grief for the loss of her offspring.

In vain did we endeavor to discover the reason of this mortality; it could not have been for want of food, for they consumed nearly as many oats as the pony. At last Tom thought of the hutch, or “locker,” as he called it. “It must,” said he, gravely, “have had the disease.” So what that fatal complaint among rabbits is, remains a profound mystery to us.

Now this hutch was made of new wood, in a carpenter’s shop, at a cost of nearly $10, and how it could have become infected with this fearful complaint we could not comprehend. However, from that time we abandoned rabbit-keeping, and resolved not, for the future, to keep any live stock which we could not look after ourselves. We did not attempt to do so in this case, because we were frightened at the responsibility Tom threw on our shoulders, if we looked at them the doe always eating her young ones was one of the evils to be dreaded by our interference.

I suppose profit is to be made by keeping them, or tame rabbits would not be placed in the poulterers’ shops by the side of ducks and chickens, but we are quite at a loss to know how it is accomplished. It did not much matter in a pecuniary point of view, as it was very doubtful if the children’s pets would ever have died for the benefit of the dinner-table, and I only insert this chapter for the purpose of proving what I stated, viz.; that if a lady wishes her stock of any kind to prosper, she must look after it herself. When I say prosper, I mean without the expense being double the value of the produce she would receive from her “four-acre farm.”

We did not enter these disasters in our housekeeping book, it went under the title of children’s expenses. For my own part, I am disposed to think that it must always be expensive to keep live stock of any kind for which all the food has to be purchased. Had we continued to keep our fowls in the yard, I am convinced they would have brought us little or no profit; but the grass, worms, and other things they found for themselves in the field, half supplied them in food, as well as keeping them healthy. We had not one death among our poultry from disease in the six months of which I have been relating this experience of our farming.

Our next venture proved more prosperous than the rabbits, and will be related in the following chapter.