A Farmer came home to his child’s cradle overturned; the Dog near and bloody. Farmer killed the Dog then found live child and dead Snake under the cradle.
Acting in blind rage is dangerous.
JBR Collection
A Farmer who had just stepped into his field to mend a gap in one of his fences, found at his return the cradle in which he had left his only child asleep turned upside down, the clothes all torn and bloody, and his Dog lying near it, besmeared also with blood. Immediately conceiving that the creature had destroyed his child, he instantly dashed out his brains with the hatchet in his hand; when turning up the cradle, he found his child unhurt, and an enormous serpent lying dead on the floor, killed by that faithful Dog whose courage and fidelity in preserving the life of his son deserved another kind of reward. These affecting circumstances afforded him a striking lesson how dangerous it is too hastily to give way to the blind impulse of a sudden passion.