THE BEAUTIFUL ITALIAN OXEN 315 



we met many teams of the splendid white oxen, always noble beasts, but 

 finer here than I have ever seen before. For beauty I am compelled to give 

 them a place above any other beasts. They are very long, their high shoul- 

 ders nearly as tall as race-horses, their bodies are not over large but made 

 as ships, their limbs are wonderfully long and clean, and their well-shapen 

 feet the perfection of a cloven foot, which to my mind is more beautiful in 

 form than that of the horse. Their color is creamy white, except the nose, 

 which is of a lustrous black. The head, set upon an arched neck, is small and 

 of a beautiful model. The eyes are large and have the same soft beauty we 

 often find in their masters'. Their yokes are better-shaped than our own 

 and do not seem to bear them down, indeed, as they go along with a 

 swinging walk that differs as much from the dull pace of our American oxen 

 as does the step of a hunter from that of a cart-horse, they are the embodi- 

 ment of animal beauty. One sees why the ancients chose these white oxen 

 as their gifts to the gods. They are beautiful enough to gladden the heart 

 of Apollo as they come with crowns of flowers to his altars. 



Farther on we began to meet teams of another and less pleasing sort. 

 Large two-wheeled carts laden with brushwood faggots were being tugged 

 over the rough ways by gangs of women and girls, some three or seven 

 making a team. The old women took the wheel-horse position; they were 

 generally unshod, and sterner, more weather-burned creatures I have never 

 seen. These high, toppling loads of brush, looking heavy enough for two 

 horses to draw, urged on by these harnessed, silent old women, through ways 

 that lay among prosperous farms and the stately villas of nobles, made a scene 

 that was more picturesque than pleasing. They were not ill clad and they 

 appeared well fed, but their faces had that hard, bitter look that labor gives 

 to old women more than it does to men. Here Michael Angelo might have 

 found the models for those stern faces of the Parcae, for they are the faces of 

 the embittered, yet noble-looking, type of poverty one sees so often in Italy. 

 Besides the women with wagons, there was a yet poorer class who bore their 

 burdens of faggots on their heads; at a distance they each looked as if a 

 great part of Birnam Wood was on its way to Dunsinane. Sometimes their 

 heads were lost in the stack of brushwood, and from the clutch their feet 

 made at the ground it was evident that their burden was heavy. This is 

 the first time that I have seen Tuscan women at work that seemed too severe 

 for them, though elsewhere I have seen them spading. 



I found my guide at his simple contadino home, of which he was the happy 

 master. Seeing me curious about it, he very gracefully asked if I would like 

 to look through it. This I was glad to do, so I gave the place something like 

 a military inspection. It was clearly an average specimen of its class. The 

 main building was about fifty feet square, two stories in height, with a ram- 



