All Creatures Great and Small (All Creatures Great and Small, #1)

by James Herriot

I grinned. This was the bit I liked. The little miracle. I felt it was something that would never grow stale no matter how often I saw it.

was easy to be a prophet of doom when the young men emerging from the colleges after a hard five years’ slog were faced by a world indifferent to their enthusiasm and bursting knowledge.

The two of us stood gazing at the gleaming rows without any idea that it was nearly all useless and that the days of the old medicines were nearly over. Soon they would be hustled into oblivion by the headlong rush of the new discoveries and they would never return.

It was time to go. We surged out with our new friends, making a little island of noise and light in the quiet village street.

Animals are unpredictable things so our whole life is unpredictable. It’s a long tale of little triumphs and disasters and you’ve got to really like it to stick it.

I was beginning to learn about the farmers and what I found I liked. They had a toughness and a philosophical attitude which was new to me. Misfortunes which would make the city dweller want to bang his head against a wall were shrugged off with “Aye, well, these things happen.”

I said goodbye and went out of the house, through the passage and into the street. In the bustle of people and the bright sunshine, I could still see only the stark, little room, the old man and his dead dog.

Veterinary surgery was a childishly simple matter in a warm bar with a few drinks inside you.

“If having a soul means being able to feel love and loyalty and gratitude, then animals are better off than a lot of humans. You’ve nothing to worry about there.”

I went back to my conversation with Siegfried that morning; we had just about decided that the man with a lot of animals couldn’t be expected to feel affection for individuals among them. But those buildings back there were full of John Skipton’s animals—he must have hundreds. Yet what made him trail down that hillside every day in all weathers? Why had he filled the last years of those two old horses with peace and beauty? Why had he given them a final ease and comfort which he had withheld from himself? It could only be love.

Siegfried’s face was transfigured by an internal radiance. Sweetness and charity, forgiveness, tolerance and affection flowed from him in an enveloping wave. I battled with an impulse to kick him swiftly on the shin.

In contrast to what I had always found in Scotland, the self-made man was regarded with deep suspicion and there was nothing so damning among the townsfolk as the darkly muttered comment: “He had nowt when he first came ’ere.”

He often said that if ever he threw a cocktail party for the clients he’d have to invite the non-payers first because they were all such charming fellows.