مجموعه: مجموعه خانه ی کوچک / کتاب: پسر کشاورز / فصل 5


توضیح مختصر

  • زمان مطالعه 16 دقیقه
  • سطح ساده

دانلود اپلیکیشن «زیبوک»


دانلود اپلیکیشن «زیبوک»

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متن انگلیسی فصل


Next morning while Almanzo was eating his oatmeal, Father said this was his birthday. Almanzo had forgotten it. He was nine years old, that cold winter morning.

“There’s something for you in the woodshed,”

Father said.

Almanzo wanted to see it right away. But Mother said if he did not eat his breakfast he was sick, and must take medicine. Then he ate as fast as he could, and she said:

“Don’t take such big mouthfuls.”


But at last breakfast was over and Almanzo got to the woodshed. There was a little calf-yoke! Father had made it of red cedar, so it was strong and yet light. It was Almanzo’s very own, and Father said: ‘Yes, son, you are old enough now to break the calves.”





Father held up one end of the yoke while Almanzo laid the other end on Bright’s neck.

Then Almanzo lifted up the bow under Bright’s throat and pushed its ends through the holes made for them in the yoke. He slipped a wooden bow-pin through one end of the bow, above the yoke, and it held the bow in place.

Bright kept twisting his head and trying to see the strange thing on his neck. But Almanzo had made him so gentle that he stood quietly, and Almanzo gave him a piece of carrot.

Star heard him crunching it and came to get his share. Father pushed him around beside Bright, under the other end of the yoke, and Almanzo pushed the other bow up under his throat and fastened it with its bow-pin. There, already, he had his little yoke of oxen.

Then Father tied a rope around Star’s nubs of horns and Almanzo took the rope. He stood in front of the calves and shouted: “Giddap!”

Star’s neck stretched out longer and longer.

Almanzo pulled, till finally Star stepped forward.

Bright snorted and pulled back. The yoke twisted Star’s head around and stopped him, and the two calves stood wondering what it was all about.

Father helped Almanzo push them, till they stood properly side by side again. Then he said:

“Well, son, I’ll leave you to figure it out.” And he went into the barn.


He stood in the snow and looked at the calves, and they stared innocently at him. He wondered how to teach them what “Giddap!” meant. There wasn’t any way to tell them. But he must find some way to tell them: “When I say, ‘Giddap!’ you must walk straight ahead.”

Almanzo thought awhile, and then he left the calves and went to the cows’ feed-box, and filled his pockets with carrots. He came back and stood as far in front of the calves as he could, holding the rope in his left hand. He put his right hand into the pocket of his barn jumper. Then he shouted, “Giddap!” and he showed Star and Bright a carrot in his hand.

They came eagerly.

“Whoa!” Almanzo shouted when they reached him, and they stopped for the carrot. He gave each of them a piece, and when they had eaten it he backed away again, and putting his hand in his pocket he shouted: “Giddap!”

It was astonishing how quickly they learned that “Giddap!” meant to start forward, and

“Whoa!” meant to stop. They were behaving as well as grown-up oxen when Father came to the barn door and said: “That’s enough, son.”


“Calves will get sullen and stop minding you if you work them too long at first,” Father said.

“Besides, it’s dinner-time.”


He took out the bow-pins, let the bows down, and lifted the yoke off the calves’ necks. He put Star and Bright in their warm stall. Then Father showed him how to wipe the bows and yoke with wisps of clean hay, and hang them on their pegs.



“I’d like to help break a colt,” Almanzo ven-tured to say.

“It’s a man’s job, son,” Father said. “One little mistake’11 ruin a fine colt.”

Almanzo did not say any more. He went soberly into the house.

It was strange to be eating all alone with Father and Mother. They ate at the table in the kitchen, because there was no company today. The kitchen was bright with the glitter of snow outside. The floor and the tables were scrubbed bone white with lye and sand. The tin saucepans glittered silver, and the copper pots gleamed gold on the walls, the teakettle hummed, and the gerani-ums on the window-sill were redder than Mother’s red dress.


“You fill the wood-box, Almanzo,” she said.

“And then there’s other things you can do.”

Almanzo opened the woodshed door by the stove. There, right before him, was a new hand-sled!

He could hardly believe it was for him. The calf-yoke was his birthday present. He asked:

“Whose sled is that, Father? Is it—it isn’t for me?”

Mother laughed and Father twinkled his eyes and asked, “Do you know any other nine-year-old that wants it?”



There was a bar between the runners, for his feet.

“Get along with you!” Mother said, laughing.

“Take that sled outdoors where it belongs.”

The cold stood steadily at forty below zero, but the sun was shining, and all afternoon Almanzo played with his sled. Of course it would not slide in the soft, deep snow, but in the road the bobsled’s runners had made two sleek, hard tracks. At the top of the hill, Almanzo started the sled and flung himself on it, and away he went.


Several times he went into the house for apples and doughnuts and cookies. Downstairs was still warm and empty. Upstairs there was the thud-thud of Mother’s loom and the clickety-clack of the flying shuttle. Almanzo opened the woodshed door and heard the slithery, soft sound of a shaving-knife, and the flap of a turned shingle.

He climbed the stairs to Father’s attic workroom. His snowy mittens hung by their string around his neck; in his right hand he held a doughnut, and in his left hand two cookies. He took a bite of doughnut and then a bite of cookie.


He picked up a shingle, laid its end against the pegs, and then drew the shaving-knife up its side.



“Be you having a good time, son?” he asked.

“Father, can I do that?” said Almanzo.

Father slid back on the bench to make room in front of him. Almanzo straddled it, and crammed the rest of the doughnut into his mouth.


He took the handles of the long knife in his hands and shaved carefully up the shingle. It wasn’t as easy as it looked. So Father put his big hands over Almanzo’s, and together they shaved the shingle smooth.


Her hands were flying and her right foot was tapping on the treadle of the loom. Back and forth the shuttle flew from her right hand to her left and back again, between the even threads of warp, and swiftly the threads of warp criss-crossed each other, catching fast the thread that the shuttle left behind it.

Thud! said the treadle. Clackety-clack! said the shuttle. Thump! said the hand-bar, and back flew the shuttle.

Mother’s workroom was large and bright, and warm from the heating-stove’s chimney. Mother’s little rocking-chair was by one window, and beside it a basket of carpet-rags, torn for sewing. In a corner stood the idle spinning-wheel. All along one wall were shelves full of hanks of red and brown and blue and yellow yarn, which Mother had dyed last summer.

But the cloth on the loom was sheep’s-gray.


“What’s that for?” said Almanzo.

“Don’t point, Almanzo,” Mother said. “That’s not good manners.” She spoke loudly, above the noise of the loom.

“Who is it for?” asked Almanzo, not pointing this time.

“Royal. It’s his Academy suit,” said Mother.



Too soon the shadows slanted down the east-ward slopes, and he had to put his sled away and help water the stock, for it was chore-time.

The well was quite a long way from the barns.






Cattle did not have to be led to water. They came eagerly to the trough and drank while Almanzo pumped, then they hurried back to the warm barns, and each went to its own place. Each cow turned into her own stall and put her head between her own stanchions. They never made a mistake.


Now Almanzo took the pitchfork and began to clean the stalls, while Father measured oats and peas into the feed-boxes. Royal came from school, and they all finished chores together as usual. Almanzo’s birthday was over.


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