The yoking of oxen is decidedly not matter for a flying smile to a boy. He lays one end of the yoke's beam on the ground, lifts the other end with his right hand, and, waving one of the ox-bows in his left, cries to the nigh ox, "Come under!" The "nigh" slowly obeys, bending its head low to accommodate the boy's stature, and permitting itself to be fastened by the ox-bow to the yoke. The boy now lifts the free end of the yoke's beam as high as he can and calls the off ox to come under. It also obeys, treading deliberately with its heavy feet, and waiting patiently for the boy's small fingers to fasten the weighty bow with a clumsy bow-key. Then the boy lifts the ponderous cart-neap and attaches it to the ring in the yoke--a labor that causes his heart to "beat like a tabor;" and thus the beasts are wedded to their daily toil. Occasionally, however, the ox will not come under at all, but will require the boy to follow it about the barnyard, dragging the jingling yoke and waving the bow with infinite fatigue; and occasionally the boy makes the mistake (no greater could be made) of yoking the off ox first. The off ox, finding a yoke sans yokefellow dangling at its neck, is much amazed, not being "broke" to that, and takes to whirling round and round and galloping up and down the barnyard in a manner suggestive of nightmare. This is a circumstance that makes a boy hopeful of going somewhere else. The yoking of oxen, though difficult, is nothing compared with the working of oxen. The boy can direct his plough lightly along its straight furrow, anticipating each movement of his oxen, and he can turn a corner "straight as a bug's leg;" nevertheless, he would like those persons who have a Wordsworthian idea of following the plough along the mountain-side in glory and in joy to witness the struggles of a green hand learning to plough--of a tramp hired man, say, one of the sort that can't milk and don't know "haw" from "gee." This miserable being tires himself out doing nothing. He cannot lay a furrow over sod downward: he has to stop and turn it over with his hands. He leaves patches of turf. He does not touch up his oxen scientifically, the "nigh" on the head, the "off" on the rump: therefore they frequently do not move at all. His plough-point hits the stones, and his plough-handles knock him in the ribs and lay him out. If he is ploughing near the barn, which is the home of the oxen, approaching it, they go like lightning, and he must drop the plough and rush at their heads to keep them from running straight into the barn: leaving it, they creep like snails, and perhaps they take to "pulling"--that is, walking sidewise, with their bodies as far apart as possible; or to "crowding"--leaning against each other over the chain that holds the plough to the yoke, and one of them gets its foot on the chain and proceeds on three feet. If the tramp hired man goes between them to adjust the chain, the oxen squeeze him flat, and one ox steps on his toe.