mmodate the boy's stature, and permitting itself to be
fastened by the ox-bow to the yoke. The boy now lifts the free end of
the yoke's beam as high as he can and calls the off ox to come under. It
also obeys, treading deliberately with its heavy feet, and waiting
patiently for the boy's small fingers to fasten the weighty bow with a
clumsy bow-key. Then the boy lifts the ponderous cart-neap and attaches
it to the ring in the yoke--a labor that causes his heart to "beat like
a tabor;" and thus the beasts are wedded to their daily toil.
Occasionally, however, the ox will not come under at all, but will
require the boy to follow it about the barnyard, dragging the jingling
yoke and waving the bow with infinite fatigue; and occasionally the boy
makes the mistake (no greater could be made) of yoking the off ox first.
The off ox, finding a yoke sans yokefellow dangling at its neck, is much
amazed, not being "broke" to that, and takes to whirling round and round
and galloping up and down the barnyard in a manner suggestive of
nightmare. This is a circumstance that makes a boy hopeful of going
somewhere else.

The yoking of oxen, though difficult, is nothing compared with the
working of oxen. The boy can direct his plough lightly along its
straight furrow, anticipating each movement of his oxen, and he can turn
a corner "straight as a bug's leg;" nevertheless, he would like those
persons who have a Wordsworthian idea of following the plough along the
mountain-side in glory and in joy to witness the struggles of a green
hand learning to plough--of a tramp hired man, say, one of the sort that
can't milk and don't know "haw" from "gee." This miserable being tires
himself out doing nothing. He cannot lay a furrow over sod downward: he
has to stop and turn it over with his hands. He leaves patches of turf.
He does not touch up his oxen scientifically, the "nigh" on the head,
the "off" on the rump: therefore they frequently do not move at all. His
plough-point hits the stones, and his plough-handles knock him in the
ribs and lay him out. If he is ploughing near the barn, which is the
home of the oxen, approaching it, they go like lightning, and he must
drop the plough and rush at their heads to keep them from running
straight into the barn: leaving it, they creep like snails, and perhaps
they take to "pulling"--that is, walking sidewise, with their bodies as
far apart as possible; or to "crowding"--leaning against each other over
th