The Ploughboy 



section of wild land about four or five miles to 

 the eastward and began all over again to clear 

 and fence and break up other fields for a new 

 farm, doubling all the stunting, heartbreak- 

 ing chopping, grubbing, stump-digging, rail- 

 splitting, fence-building, barn-building, house- 

 building, and so forth. 



By this time I had learned to run the break- 

 ing plough. Most of these ploughs were very- 

 large, turning furrows from eighteen inches to 

 two feet wide, and were drawn by four or five 

 yoke of oxen. They were used only for the first 

 ploughing, in breaking up the wild sod woven 

 into a tough mass, chiefly by the cordlike roots 

 of perennial grasses, reinforced by the tap- 

 roots of oak and hickory bushes, called "grubs," 

 some of which were more than a century old 

 and four or five inches in diameter. In the 

 hardest ploughing on the most difficult ground, 

 the grubs were said to be as thick as the hair on 

 a dog's back. If in good trim, the plough cut 

 through and turned over these grubs as if the 

 century-old wood were soft like the flesh of 

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