Connecticut western news., 1885-09-23
BOSSING A YOKE OF OXEN.
An Exciting Rerniniscence of
 Life on the Farm.
Flowing Sunny Ground Among Snakes
 and Yellow Jackets.

When my memory goes back to the good old days of "whoa-haw Buck" I cannot help instinctively rubbing my shins. The first thing ever boss cd was yoke of oxen. At the ma. ture age of II, was invested with large whip, ornamented with keen cracker, and informed that I might shape the course of old Buck and Bright while our hired man guided the blow. l was young and inexperi- enced, and entered upon my new du- ties with a zeal well nigh amounting to enthusiasm, but at the end of the first half day, when I started for din- ner with the bark nearly all off the front part of my legs, and 4,000 splin- ters in the bottom of my feet, felt that change had come over the happy scene, and was willing, in considera. tion of some slight recompense to re- sign my position of honor and trust. and accept more humble and less re- spcnsible office, where would not be held to answer for everything that happened to the hired man.
 Oxen, when drawing the blow in land that has not yet yielded to the gentle influences of civilization, are apt to pause occasionally for the pur- pose of meditating upon the good they are doing. They generally pause just at the moment the blow gets stuck against stump, and when the hired man, who has been walking leisurely along after the team thinking about getting married, overtakes the blow and attempts to shove 1t right ahead with his stomach. the sky generally becomes a shade more azure, and the superincumbent atmosphere reeks with the fumes of overdone birthstone. At such a moment, the boy who is driving steers needs great presence of mind. Unless he Is quick and firm, he is liable to be slapped over before he can detract the attention of the hired man from himself to the steers. An experienced boy, as soon as he ob- serves that the hired man has been successful in driving the blow through the stump, will have a great deal of trouble with the whip in trying to bring them to right in way that will render it dangerous for the hired man to get very close to him. The chances are that he will get interested in the oxen, and confer upon them the favors be seemed about to shower up- on the boy.
 There were few other small issues liable to crop out in the course of driving yoke of oxen across field of stumpy ground. One of them was the premature awakening of the snake that had lain dormant during tho winter. As the blow shear rolled them up and then wound them around the bare legs of the hired man, he of- ten expressed himself in way that made me doubt his Christianity, and I always noticed that he did not beam upon me so graciously at such mo- ments as he did when the patriotic note of the dinner horn was waited to US from the house.
 There was another experience, how ever, that sometimes fell to our lot. It was to ruthlessly break in upon the domestic harmony and blissful repose of den of yellow jackets. I am afraid my readers never saw yellow jacket, SO will inform them right here that 1t is a sort of small, yellow wasp that can sting few bars and then go right back and repeat fortissimo. The yellow-jackets always build their nests in the immediate vicinity of small stump, and the hired man never found out that he had disturbed them until the blow was effectually set against the stump, when he bent all his energies to pull it out while the oxen were bending all their energies to pull it in, and the yellow-iackets were working of their energies on the oxen and hired man, while boy about my size was carrying his energies away from danger at a rate truly surprising.
 The oxen finally broke the chain that bound them to the blow, and made their way to place where they could stand in water something more than knee deep, and that ended the work of that particular day, the rest of which was devoted to cremating the. yellow-jackets' nest-Blooming- ton Through Mail.