Brook Farm: Historic and Personal MemoirsCodman, John Thomas
History
Brook Farm: Historic and Personal Memoirs
Codman, John Thomas
Brook Farm Phalanx (West Roxbury, Boston, Mass.)
I was in the gardener's department, assisting him in the care of the
greenhouse plants and making flower beds, but our especial work was
laying out and planting a large garden which should be a permanent
addition to the beauty of the place, and a future source of income. On
the farm was a fine imported bull who did not seem to be doing his
share of work in our very industrious place, so a ring was put in his
nose and he was my especial charge in the way of a team. It appears
cruel to one who for the first time sees a bull led by the nose, but
there seems to be no reason why a bull should complain, when there are
so many humans continually led through life in the same fashion.
In fact the bull throve and had in some ways considerable sense. He was
harnessed into a tipcart and we made him work for us. He was a strong,
powerful fellow, and has carried his eighty loads of gravel a day, from
one part of the garden to the other. At noon I would relieve him of his
harness and mount his back for a ride to the barn. I would then be the
"observed of all observers." Sometimes, for the frolic, I would load my
cart with young misses and dump them at the Hive door, backing up to it
in the most approved style of an old "gee-haw" farmer.
"Prince Albert," the bull, was a gem. He worked admirably. He never
gave me any trouble, or anyone else human, but when stalled near the
oxen he had a peculiar fancy to poke his horns into them. Early one
morning, by some mischance, he got loose in the barn, and "going" for
one of them frightened him so much that he also broke loose, and in
trying to make his escape from the bull, backed into the barn-room.
There was a large trap door in it, and the ox ventured on it, breaking
it, and fell through. The bull was so close behind that he could not
escape, and they dropped together into the little room below, the door
of which was open. The ox escaped into the yard, and ran for dear life
around the front of the Hive, pursued by the bull. Whether the jar of
the fall, his escape, or his quiet disposition sobered him I know not,
but he soon fell into a jog-trot pursuit, and was caught and returned
by a neighboring farmer.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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