OUK KUKAL DIVINITY 119 



again. The savage tribes are never without the 

 horse; the Scythians are all mounted; but the cow 

 would tame and humanize them. When the Indians 

 will cultivate the cow, I shall think their civiliza- 

 tion fairly begun. Recently, when the horses were 

 sick with the epizootic, and the oxen came to the 

 city and helped to do their work, what an Arcadian 

 air again filled the streets ! But the dear old oxen, 

 — how awkward and distressed they looked ! Juno 

 wept in the face of every one of them. The horse 

 is a true citizen, and is entirely at home in the paved 

 streets; but; the ox — what a complete embodiment, 

 of all rustic and rural things! Slow, deliberate, 

 thick-skinned, powerful, hulky, ruminating, fragrant- 

 breathed, when he came to town the spirit and sug- 

 gestion of all Georgics and Bucolics came with him. 

 O citizen, was it only a plodding, unsightly brute 

 that went by 1 Was there no chord in your bosom, 

 long silent, that sweetly vibrated at the sight of 

 that patient, Herculean couple ? Did you smell no 

 hay or cropped herbage, see no summer pastures 

 with circles of cool shade, hear no voice of herds 

 among the hills? They were very likely the only 

 horses your grandfather ever had. Not much trou- 

 ble to harness and unharness them. Not much 

 vanity on the road in those days. They did aU the 

 work on the early pioneer farm. They were the 

 gods whose rude strength first broke the soil. They 

 could live where the moose and the deer could. If 

 there was no clover or timothy to be had, then the 

 twigs of the basswood and birch would do. Before 



