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Updated: June 21, 2025
The terror of what they had escaped or of what they had seen was upon them. They had harnessed the plough-horse to the dray or market-wagon and to the invaders had left everything. What, they asked, would befall the live stock they had abandoned, the ducks on the pond, the cattle in the field? Who would feed them and give them water? At the question the tears would break out afresh.
Compulsory-contented poverty is utterly, irredeemably despicable, and, by necessity, ignorantly blasphemous not because its style of glorifying God is to place His conceded image exactly at the plough-horse level, but because it teaches its babies, from the cradle upward, that a capricious Mumbo-Jumbo has made pollard-bread for them, and something with a French name for its white-headed boy; moleskins, tied below the knee, for them, and a belltopper for the favourite of the family; the three R's for them, and the classics, ancient and modern, for the vessel chosen to honour; illicit snakejuice for them, and golden top for the other fellow.
The plough-horse was a magnificent Arabian, whose tail swept the freshly furrowed earth, while the Spirit of Poetry was issuing from a practicable wigwam on the left, and was a lady of such ample dimensions that no poet would have dared say 'no' when she called him. The dining-room was blighted by framed photographs of the draper's relations and the draper's wife's relations; all uniformly ugly.
"I am not addressin' myself to the young an' immature. I am speakin' to those whose opinion an' experience commands respect." I saw Rod raise his head as though he were about to make a remark; then he dropped it again, and stood three-cornered, like a plough-horse. Rod can cover his mile in a shade under three minutes on an ordinary road to an ordinary buggy.
Chalk and sand and brown earth and red are all being turned up and broken and bathed in the sun and wind. Adam has begun to delve again. There is the urgency of life in fields long idle. It is not that the fields have become populous. One sees many laboured fields, but little labour. The occasional plough-horse, however, brings strength into the stillness. How noble a figure of energy he makes!
Push hard, my brave lad, and mind your feet don't slip!" "If your honour pleases," said Paddy, without turning his eyes from his conquest, "'tis a little help I would be wishing here. She would be as strong in the shoulder as a good plough-horse and I am not for staying here for ever." "Bravo, my grand lad!" I cried, at last finding my hat, which had somehow gotten into a corner.
For were there not all the fair roads of the county to pace and gallop upon if one must needs be out and jogging! Unseen objects, vaguely discerned to be moving in the undergrowth affrighted the old plough-horse of the levels infinitely reassured and whinnying with joyful relief when the head of horned cattle showed presently as the cause of the commotion.
"I am not addressin' myself to the young an' immature. I am speakin' to those whose opinion an' experience commands respect." I saw Rod raise his head as though he were about to make a remark; then he dropped it again, and stood three-cornered, like a plough-horse. Rod can cover his mile in a shade under three minutes on an ordinary road to an ordinary buggy.
The old settlers always held up his memory as that of a man ever ready to do a good deed, whether it was to run to the rescue of some one attacked by Indians, or to hunt up the strayed plough-horse of a brother settler less skilful as a woodsman; yet he could hardly read or write. Logan was almost as good a woodsman and individual fighter, and in addition was far better suited to lead men.
Organized counties and all the subordination of social life are there; and there are the noisy school-house, the decent church, the mill, the country store, the fat ox, and the sleek plough-horse.
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