Crossword-Solution: OXEN 4 letters, 517 clues 🏆 scrabble score: 11

The Dog in the Manger A DOG lay in a manger, and by his growling and snapping prevented the oxen from eating the hay which had been placed for them.

After a long spell of effort, I succeeded in getting my cart righted, my oxen disentangled, and again yoked to the cart.

Then he turned off like he was going to leave the platform, and says, kind of lazy and indifferent: “Well, I believe that is all.” Why, you never heard such a howl!—and it come from the whole house: “What _was_ it you seen him do? Stay where you are, you little devil! You think you are going to work a body up till his mouth’s a-watering and stop there? What _was_ it he done?” That was it, you see—he just done it to get an “effect”; you couldn’t ’a’ pulled him off of that platform with a yoke of oxen.

Because you fancy that the shepherd or neatherd fattens of tends the sheep or oxen with a view to their own good and not to the good of himself or his master; and you further imagine that the rulers of states, if they are true rulers, never think of their subjects as sheep, and that they are not studying their own advantage day and night.

Thou shalt see castles and fair strong-houses about the country-side, but the great men who dwell therein are not the natural kindly lords of the land yielding service to Earls, Dukes, and Kings, and having under them vavassors and villeins, men of the manor; but their tillers and shepherds and workmen and servants be mere thralls, whom they may sell at any market, like their horses or oxen.