was
cleared, the number was gradually increased until we had five yoke.
These wise, patient, plodding animals did all the ploughing, logging,
hauling, and hard work of every sort for the first four or five
years, and, never having seen oxen before, we looked at them with the
same eager freshness of conception as we did at the wild animals. We
worked with them, sympathized with them in their rest and toil and
play, and thus learned to know them far better than we should had we
been only trained scientific naturalists. We soon learned that each ox
and cow and calf had individual character. Old white-faced Buck, one
of the second yoke of oxen we owned, was a notably sagacious fellow.
He seemed to reason sometimes almost like ourselves. In the fall we
fed the cattle lots of pumpkins and had to split them open so that
mouthfuls could be readily broken off. But Buck never waited for us to
come to his help. The others, when they were hungry and impatient,
tried to break through the hard rind with their teeth, but seldom with
success if the pumpkin was full grown. Buck never wasted time in this
mumbling, slavering way, but crushed them with his head. He went to
the pile, picked out a good one, like a boy choosing an orange or
apple, rolled it down on to the open ground, deliberately kneeled in
front of it, placed his broad, flat brow on top of it, brought his
weight hard down and crushed it, then quietly arose and went on with
his meal in comfort. Some would call this "instinct," as if so-called
"blind instinct" must necessarily make an ox stand on its head to
break pumpkins when its teeth got sore, or when nobody came with an
axe to split them. Another fine ox showed his skill when hungry by
opening all the fences that stood in his way to the corn-fields.

The humanity we found in them came partly through the expression of
their eyes when tired, their tones of voice when hungry and calling
for food, their patient plodding and pulling in hot weather, their
long-drawn-out sighing breath when exhausted and suffering like
ourselves, and their enjoyment of rest with the same grateful looks as
ours. We recognized their kinship also by their yawning like ourselves
when sleepy and evidently enjoying the same peculiar pleasure at the
roots of their jaws; by the way they stretched themselves in the
morning after a good rest; by learning languages,--Scotch, English,
Irish, French, Dutch,--a smattering of each as required in the
faithfu