ower animals, who
dwell in the Dark Ages of their kind--dwell on and on in affection,
submission, and trust, while their lord demands of them their labor,
their sustenance, or their life.

Of a winter's day, when these poor dumb serfs have been scattered over
the portionless earth, how often they look towards this fortress and
lift up their voices with cries for night to come; the horses, ruffled
and shivering, with their tails to the wind, as they snap their frosted
fodder, or paw through the rime to the frozen grass underneath, causing
their icy fetlocks to rattle about their hoofs; the cattle, crowded to
leeward of some deep-buried haystack, the exposed side of the outermost
of them white with whirling flakes; the sheep, turning their pitiful,
trusting eyes about them over the fields of storm in earth and sky!

What joy at nightfall to gather them home to food and warmth and rest!
If there is ever a time when I feel myself a mediaeval lord to trusty
vassals, it is then. Of a truth I pass entirely over the Middle Ages,
joining my life to the most ancient dwellers of the plains, and
becoming a simple father of flocks and herds. When they have been duly
stabled according to their kinds, I climb to the crib in the barn and
create a great landslide of the fat ears that is like laughter; and
then from every stall what a hearty, healthy chorus of cries and
petitions responds to that laughter of the corn! What squeals and
grunts persuasive beyond the realms of rhetoric! What a blowing of
mellow horns from the cows! And the quick nostril trumpet-call of the
horse, how eager, how dependent, yet how commanding! As I mount to the
top of the pile, if I ever feel myself a royal personage it is then; I
ascend my throne; I am king of the corn; and there is not a brute
peasant in my domain that does not worship me as ruler of heaven and
earth.

Or I love to catch up the bundles of oats as they are thrown down from
the loft and send them whirling through the cutting-box so fast that
they pour into the big baskets like streams of melted gold; or,
grasping my pitchfork, I stuff the ricks over the mangers with the rich
aromatic hay until I am as warm as when I loaded the wagons with it at
midsummer noons.

With what sweet sounds and odors now the whole barn is filled! How
robust, clean, well-meaning are my thoughts! In what comfort of mind I
can turn to my own roof and store!

This hour in my stable is the only one out of t