22 Old Days on the Farm 



one of the world's most important waterways 

 named after it — the Bosphorus — and some of the 

 minor poets have chirped a few notes in its mem- 

 ory but — sic transit gloria mundi — so far as the 

 ox is concerned, which being liberally translated 

 means, the tail goes with the hide. 



"BREAKING IN" A YOUNG OX-TEAM 



But to get along with my earliest recollection 

 story, I recall that, one Christmas Day, when I 

 was a very small boy, practically a child in arms, 

 "the hired man who worked for pa" announced 

 his intention of giving the children of our house- 

 hold a festive treat. He had secured my father 's 

 permission to yoke up a pair of young bullocks to 

 an old **long" sleigh and initiate the "critters" 

 into the business of being of service to the 

 world. 



In these effete and highly civilised days, bul- 

 locks are stabled and petted while young, but in 

 those "halcyon days of yore" — the good old days 

 I mean, and like the words better, — ^most young 

 cattle ran about a strawstack, all winter long and 

 made a race track, in miniature, about it. No 

 cyclist, motor-cyclist or auto manipulator could 

 round curves with greater facility than those 

 young bullocks I write of, and they had prac- 

 tised all sorts of buck-jumping and sudden, intri- 

 cate and complicated movements on the sterco- 

 raceous heap — ^manure pile — in our barnyard. No 



