eally metaphors themselves. The first makers of such words were
speaking "in metaphor," as we should say now; but when the words
passed into general use this fact was not noticed.

A great many of the metaphors found in words are the same in many
languages. Many of them are taken from agriculture, which is, of
course, after hunting, the earliest occupation of all peoples. We can
easily think of many words now used in a general sense which
originally applied to some simple country practice. We speak of being
"goaded" to do a thing when some one persuades or threatens or
irritates us into doing it. But a _goad_ was originally a spiked stick
used to drive cattle forward. The word _goad_, then, as we use it now,
is a real metaphor.

Again, we speak of our feelings being "harrowed." The word _harrow_
first meant, and still means, the drawing of a frame with iron teeth
(itself called a _harrow_) over ploughed land to break up the clods.
From this meaning it has come to have the figurative meaning of
wounding or ruffling the feelings.

Another word connected with agriculture which has passed into a
general sense is _glean_. We may now speak of "gleaning" certain facts
or news, but to glean was originally (and still means in its literal
sense) to gather the ears of corn remaining after the reapers have got
in the harvest.

We speak of a nation groaning under the "yoke" of a foreign tyrant, or
again of the "yoke" of matrimony, and in the Bible we have the text,
"My yoke is easy." In these and in many other cases the word _yoke_ is
used figuratively to denote something weighing on the spirit; but the
original use of _yoke_, and again one which remains, was to name the
wooden cross-piece fastened over the necks of two oxen, and attached
to a plough or wagon which they have to draw.

The word _earn_ reminds us of a time when the chief way of earning
money or payment of any kind was field-labour; for this word, which
means so many things now, comes from an old Teutonic word meaning
field-labour. The same word became in German _ernte_, which means
"harvest."

Another common word with somewhat the same meaning as _earn_ is
_gain_; and this, again, takes us back to a time when our early
ancestors won their profits by the grazing of their flocks. The word
_gain_ came into English from an Old French word, but this word in its
turn came from a Teutonic word meaning to graze or pasture. The first
people who used the word _earn_ for