People who know nothing of the country call
this alleged friendship of the ox for his yoke-fellow fabulous. Let them
go to the stable and look at a poor, thin, emaciated animal, lashing his
sunken sides with his restless tail, sniffing with terror and contempt
at the fodder that is put before him, his eyes always turned toward the
door, pawing the empty place beside him, smelling the yoke and chains
his companion wore, and calling him incessantly with a pitiful bellow.
The driver will say: "There's a yoke of oxen lost; his brother's dead,
and he won't work. We ought to fatten him for killing; but he won't eat,
and he'll soon starve to death."
The old ploughman was working slowly, in silence, without useless
expenditure of strength. His docile team seemed in no greater hurry
than he; but as he kept constantly at work, never turning aside, and
exerting always just the requisite amount of sustained power, his furrow
was as quickly cut as his son's, who was driving four less powerful oxen
on some harder and more stony land a short distance away.
But the spectacle that next attracted my attention was a fine one
indeed, a noble subject for a painter. At the other end of the arable
tract, a young man of attractive appearance was driving a superb team:
four yoke of young beasts, black-coated with tawny spots that gleamed
like fire, with the short, curly heads that suggest the wild bull, the
great, wild eyes, the abrupt movements, the nervous, jerky way of doing
their work, which shows that the yoke and goad still irritate them and
that they shiver with wrath as they yield to the domination newly
imposed upon them.
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