At the State Fair every fall it was taken as a matter of course that "S.
Owen" (such was her business designation) should win more red ribbons
than any other exhibitor either of cereals or live stock. There was
nothing that Sally Owen did not know about feeding cattle, and a paper
she once read before the Short-Horn Breeders' Association is a classic
on this important subject. Mrs. Owen still retained the active control
of her affairs, though she had gradually given over to a superintendent
much of the work long done by herself; but woe unto him who ever tried
to deceive her! She maintained an office on the ground floor of her
house where she transacted business and kept inventories of every stick
of wood, every bushel of corn, every litter of pigs to which she had
ever been entitled. For years she had spent much time at her farms,
particularly through the open months of the year when farm tasks are
most urgent; but as her indulgence in masculine pursuits had not abated
her womanly fastidiousness, she carried with her in all her journeys a
negro woman whose business it was to cook for her mistress and otherwise
care for her comfort. She had acquired the farm in Kentucky to continue
her ties with the state of her birth, but this sentimental consideration
did not deter her from making the Lexington farm pay; Sally Owen made
everything pay! Her Southern ancestry was manifest in nothing more
strikingly than in her treatment of the blacks she had always had about
her.
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