And the plain ox, That harmless, honest guileless animal, In what has he offended? he whose toil, Patient and ever ready, clothes the land With all the pomp of harvest. THOMPSON—_The Seasons_. A man loves the meat in his youth that he cannot endure in his age. MUCH ADO ABOUT NOTHING. Tell me what you eat, and I will tell you what you are. BRILLAT SAVARIN. The sign of true, not casual, progress, ... is the progress of vegetarianism ... more and more people have given up animal food. TOLSTOI. I had not then learned the mystery of nerves. CLARA BARTON. CREDULOUS OX—INNOCENT CHILD—CLARA BARTON, A VEGETARIAN Among the Puritans the horse was a luxury; the beast of burden was the ox. In the first half of the nineteenth century the ox made possible in Massachusetts even the existence of man. In the snows of winter, at seed time and at harvest, the toiling ox was loyal—faithful to the best interests of the family. The ox himself was unsuspecting, and untutored in the art of deceiving others. He couldn’t think his kindly attentive Master, Man, unappreciative, disloyal—wholly obsessed with greed. He didn’t know that money was above life,—he hadn’t read war-history. He didn’t know that through the love of money, by man, come life’s woes. The ox knew only that _he_ was the friend to man; and he thought man must be _his_ friend. Poor credulous ox! And yet in the child the friendship of the ox is not misplaced. Innocent child! to man and beast Heaven’s best gift, a loyal friend. Captain Stephen Barton kept a dairy. When a small girl Clara used to drive the cows and oxen to, and from, the pasture. Clara also assisted morning and evening in milking the cows. One evening she observed three men, one holding in his hand an axe, driving a big, red, fat ox into the barn. She saw the man with the axe strike the ox in the head, then saw the ox drop to the floor. At the same moment she fell unconscious to the ground. She was carried to the house, placed on a bed, and a camphor bottle freely used. When she regained consciousness, in reply as to why she fell, she said: “Someone struck me.” “Oh, no, no one struck you,” they said. “Then what makes my head sore,” she asked. At that time her desire for meat left her; and in later years she used to say, “all through life to the present, I have eaten meat only when I must for the sake of appearances. The bountiful ground always yields enough for all of my needs and wants.” [Illustration: ANNIE WITTENMEYER Clara Barton is second to none of womankind.—MRS. ANNIE WITTENMEYER, First President W. C. T. U. ] [Illustration: JOHN B. GOUGH Clara Barton’s lecture—I never heard anything more thrilling in my life.—JOHN B. GOUGH, America’s Greatest Temperance Lecturer. ]