My Boyhood and Youth 



apple, rolled it down on to the open ground, 

 deliberately kneeled in front of it, placed his 

 broad, flat brow on top of it, brought his weight 

 hard down and crushed it, then quietly arose 

 and went on with his meal in comfort. Some 

 would call this "instinct," as if so-called 

 "blind instinct" must necessarily make an ox 

 stand on its head to break pumpkins when its 

 teeth got sore, or when nobody came with an 

 axe to split them. Another fine ox showed his 

 skill when hungry by opening all the fences 

 that stood in his way to the corn-fields. 



The humanity we found in them came partly 

 through the expression of their eyes when 

 tired, their tones of voice when hungry and 

 calling for food, their patient plodding and 

 pulling in hot weather, their long-drawn-out 

 sighing breath when exhausted and suffering 

 like ourselves, and their enjoyment of rest 

 with the same grateful looks as ours. We 

 recognized their kinship also by their yawning 

 like ourselves when sleepy and evidently en- 

 joying the same peculiar pleasure at the roots 

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