They were what are called oxen _freshly yoked_. The
man who was guiding them had to clear a field until recently used for
pasturage, and filled with venerable stumps--an athlete's task which his
energy, his youth, and his eight almost untamed beasts were hardly
sufficient to accomplish.
A child of six or seven years, as beautiful as an angel, with a lamb's
fleece covering his shoulders, over his blouse, so that he resembled
the little Saint John the Baptist of the painters of the Renaissance,
was trudging along in the furrow beside the plough and pricking the
sides of the oxen with a long, light stick, the end of which was armed
with a dull goad. The proud beasts quivered under the child's small
hand, and made the yokes and the straps about their foreheads groan,
jerking the plough violently forward. When the ploughshare struck a
root, the driver shouted in a resonant voice, calling each beast by his
name, but rather to soothe than to excite them; for the oxen, annoyed by
the sudden resistance, started forward, digging their broad forked feet
into the ground, and would have turned aside and dragged the plough
across the field, had not the young man held the four leaders in check
with voice and goad, while the child handled the other four. He, too,
shouted, poor little fellow, in a voice which he tried to render
terrible, but which remained as sweet as his angelic face.
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