cowsay help

[John Hubbard]

When using cowsay, how do I control when the cow divides my message onto 
multiple lines?  I tried
$ cowsay line1/
 >line2
 >
but I got:
 ____________
< line1line2 >
 ------------
        \   ^__^
         \  (oo)\_______
            (__)\       )\/\
                ||----w |
                ||     ||

How can I get the cow to say my motd when I log in via ssh? 


-- 
-john

To be or not to be, that is the question
                2b || !2b
(0b10)*(0b1100010) || !(0b10)*(0b1100010)
        0b11000100 || !0b11000100
        0b11000100 || 0b00111011
               0b11111111
        255, that is the answer.