Each spoke of _his_ horses and _his_ waggons much in the same way as an artillery officer speaks of his guns. There were three pairs of horses in the Community, and, in theory at least, everyone was equally free to use them, but experience showed that that sort of handling did not suit horses, who do better if left always in the care of the same persons. Therefore it came about that Brother Dummy always had Biting Bill, since no one else could manage the brute, and Ezra generally had Queen Katharine and Rebel, while Brother Wright kept the greys. Now these animals, although common property, were invariably spoken of by their drivers as _theirs_, for the use of certain familiar phrases, which to the outsider might seem to denote the idea of private property, came naturally to their lips. It is often more difficult to change habits of speech than laws of property. Reformers who start out to alter the whole course of modern ideas and to rearrange the world according to a plan of their own devising, would do well to meditate upon this peculiarity and see what it points to. Surely so slight a thing as a word might easily be eradicated from human speech, and yet how difficult it is to do so. But the point to consider is that the pertinacity, which shows itself in modes of expression, may very well exist in just as strong a form in habits of thought and feeling. The Pioneers, like others of that sort, passed over and disregarded such expressions as “my horse,” “my waggon,” and “your plough,” not apparently recognizing that the expressions denoted a habit of thought that might very easily strike at the very root of their institution. They were communists, as Olive had said, in bits of this and scraps of that, but the old leaven of individualism was there still among them, only dormant. The Pioneers never expected that the leaven would again become an active principle. Like other people, they were unable to see into the future, and therefore rejoiced in their escape from the perils of the prairie fire and considered that they had no further danger to apprehend for this winter at least. The sea was smooth and the sky was serene, so to speak, and they did not perceive the sunken rocks that lay in the track of their experimental bark. CHAPTER XV. IN QUEST OF NEWS.