A few strokes laid the tree low, and I soon had it trimmed ready for my purpose.  My next care was to make a pair of wheels, and this took me much longer.  I had noticed during one of my walks a large tree that had been felled for some purpose, but never used, and to it I repaired with a saw and worked away for several hours, cutting two slices from the fairly symmetrical bole, about four inches wide.  These gave me a pair of solid wheels about twenty inches in diameter, which were large enough for my purpose.  These I attached to a short axle and bolted to the tree which I felled, and by horizontally thrusting an iron rod, two feet long, through the nose of my plough, about eighteen inches from the end, I had my implement complete.  The iron rod was to keep the pointed end of my oak tree from burying itself too deeply in the ground.  It was not a beautiful object, but its usefulness condoned its ugliness.

[Illustration:  MY PLOUGH.—­UTILITY, NOT BEAUTY.]

I placed my handiwork aside for a season, and the next two days made myself a curious sideless cart, which I could not help thinking bore a great resemblance to a ladder on wheels.  Two more sections from the big tree formed the wheels, while a square piece of quartering thrust through formed an axletree.  The shafts and body of my vehicle were two thick ash saplings twelve feet long, joined together with barrel staves two and a half feet long, with the convex sides downward; then fore and aft of the wheels I erected a species of gibbet to prevent my load from shifting, which having done, my antediluvian chariot was complete.

[Illustration:  AN ANTEDILUVIAN CHARIOT.]

Having provided my implements I now proceeded to till my land.  I took a whole back-aching day to pluck all the large weeds and stones off my farm, and retired weary at night to dream of my flourishing crops of the future.

Up with the lark next morning, I set out to find my noble long-eared steed, Edward; but although I roamed about for an hour and a half I could not discover him anywhere, so breakfasted and searched again, but to no purpose.  I gave him up as having been drowned whilst browsing on the toothsome but truculent thistle or gorse.  I looked at my plough and cart in dismay, saying, “Man proposes, and an ass disposes.”  But shortly after this dismal reflection, judge of my joy when I heard his musical voice lifted up in sweet song, and borne to my enraptured ears on the balmy noontide breeze.  Laugh not, reader, for the poor brute’s voice was sweeter to me in my loneliness than that of the greatest operatic singer who ever trilled her wondrous notes.

Even after hearing the ass’s braying I was a long time before I came upon him quite down upon the stony shore, with not a blade of grass nor even a thistle for him to nibble at.  How he got there is to me a problem to this day; but how I laboured to get him up again will ever remain in my mind, for it makes me feel sore all over to think of it.