I then asked if his master whipped him. “Not much lately; he used to, till my hide got hardened, but now he has a white oak goad stick with an iron brad in its end, with which he jabs my hind quarters, and hurts me awfully.” I asked why he did not kick up, and knock his tormentor out of the wagon. “I did try to once,” said he, “but am old and was weak, and could only get my heels high enough to break the whiffletree, and besides lost my balance and fell down flat. Master then jumped down, and, getting a cudgel, struck me over the head, and I thought my troubles were over. This happened just before Mr Ben Ham’s house, and I should have been finished, and ready for the crows, if he had not stepped out and told master not to strike again, if he did he would shake his liver out. That saved my life; but I was sorry, though Mr Ham meant good.” The goad with the iron brad was in the wagon, and, snatching it out, I struck the end against a stone, and the stabber flew into the mill-pond. “There,” says I, “old colt,” as I threw the goad back into the wagon, “he won’t harpoon you again with that iron.” The poor old brute knew what I said well enough, for I looked him in the eye and spoke horse language.
From the diary of Nathaniel Hawthorne (1804-64), as given in Hawthorne’s First Diary, With an Account of Its Discovery and Loss by Samuel Thomas Pickard (1828-1915).
* The whiffletrees are the bars on the straps or ‘traces’ that attach a horse to the cart behind it. Properly speaking, the phrase ‘kicking over the traces’ refers to the same action: lashing out at the thongs that bind a beast to its burden, that is, defiance or rebellion.