My Boyhood and Youth 



but they never got off the track, for they fol- 

 lowed it by scent like dogs. Once, father, 

 returning late from Portage or Kingston, com- 

 pelled Tom and Jerry, our first oxen, to leave 

 the dim track, imagining they must be going 

 wrong. At last they stopped and refused to 

 go farther. Then father unhitched them from 

 the wagon, took hold of Tom's tail, and was 

 thus led straight to the shanty. Next morning 

 he set out to seek his wagon and found it on the 

 brow of a steep hill above an impassable swamp. 

 We learned less from the cows, because we 

 did not enter so far into their lives, working 

 with them, suffering heat and cold, hunger and 

 thirst, and almost deadly weariness with them; 

 but none with natural charity could fail to 

 sympathize with them in their love for their 

 calves, and to feel that it in no way differed from 

 the divine mother-love of a woman in thought- 

 ful, self-sacrificing care; for they would brave 

 every danger, giving their lives for their off- 

 spring. Nor could we fail to sympathize with 

 their awkward, blunt-nosed baby calves, with 

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