Chapter XII: Part 12

_Sept. 24._--The driver is a thoroughly dependable animal, gentle, no bad tricks, can be driven by a child, and no one complains, even though she resembles certain Canadian financiers of whom J. J. Hill said that they "wouldn't stand without being hitched." On the whole, I could give her an excellent character if she had to pass into the service of some one else. But I hate to think what I might have done to her yesterday afternoon if I could have caught her. Never once have I deceived her on the question of oats, or salt, or an apple, when trying to catch her. No, indeed! Once, when a little boy, I read a moral story about a farmer who used to fool his horse by holding out a hat that had nothing in it until the wise animal lost all faith in him and refused to be caught, even when he came bearing carrots and other rich gifts. I laid the story to heart, and never once have I gone to the pasture field without something to tickle her palate. But yesterday she went back on me. When I went out to the field I had a dish of oats in one hand and a bridle in the other. The autumn sunshine was warm and the air bracing, and I felt at peace with all the world. I dawdled towards the corner where she was feeding with the leisurely air of one who was enjoying life, and intended to enjoy it still more by taking a lazy drive to the post office. But the driver had other views. Without notifying the Department of Labour, or otherwise conforming to the requirements of the Lemieux Act, she went on strike. When I was within about a rod of her, she raised her head, snorted, kicked up her heels, and galloped across the field. She didn't even sniff at the oats. I was surprised, of course, but not discouraged. It was a fine day, and I was not in much of a hurry, so I strolled along after her. She had stopped at the farthest corner, and had started to eat as if she were starving. She fairly mowed down the scorched grass. I don't think I ever saw a horse that seemed so hungry. When I approached her, she started to walk away with her head down, still eating as if her life depended on it. I whistled a soft imitation of a whinny and rattled the oats invitingly, and called her pet names, but when I was almost within touching distance she snorted again, and, with tail up, galloped back to the original corner. It was a beautiful exhibition of animal vitality. As I watched her doing her stunts, jumping over furrows as if they were Government drains, kicking up her heels, shying at bits of paper, I positively envied her abundance of fool energy. What wouldn't I give to have so much superfluous steam. And then, the action she was showing! I never thought she had it in her. If I could only make her show up like that in harness, she would take all the prizes at the fall fair. Still, she must be caught, so I tempered my admiration. Evidently, she didn't feel the need of oats. She had been getting altogether too many since harvest time. Going back to the house, I got a lump of salt and a couple of apples. Apples would catch her, if anything would. Approaching cautiously, I whistled coaxingly, and displayed the apples to the best advantage. She was interested at once, but she didn't walk straight up to me as is her usual custom. She started to walk around me, with ears laid back. I stood where I was, and turned slowly as she walked around. The apples were held out temptingly, and she never took her eye off them for a second. Gradually the circle became smaller, and my heart bounded with hope when she finally stopped and stretched her nose towards an apple. I let her close her teeth on it before I started to move my hand towards her head. It was a fatal move. Instantly she was off across the field, giving imitations of Maud S. and Salvator. Right there I lost my temper, and shied the apple at her. She saw it bounce past, applied the brakes, reversed her engines, and came to a full stop within twice her own length. Then she gobbled the apple. I thought the time a good one to make further approaches, but it was no use. She frisked away, showing in every line of her body how much she was enjoying her freedom. This was her day off, and, besides, she had fooled me out of an apple. Sputtering with wrath, I called the family to help. We would corner the brute. Oh, yes, we would, would we? Not if she knew it! It would have been just about as easy to corner a jack-rabbit on the prairie. We could get her headed towards a corner once in a while, but, as the scientists say, "The angle of reflection was equal to the angle of incidence." She would gallop in at one side and gallop out at the other "just as easy." I am a little ashamed to remember how I raged around that field, but what can you do when the people who are supposed to be helping you duck behind a tree when they see the horse coming, instead of getting in her way and waving their aprons and jumping up and down and yelling like wild Indians. She just had fun with us until we decided to stop. Then the family went back to the house, feeling offended at the directness of my remarks, and I went to cut corn so that I could work off my lust for slaughter. At milking time the exasperating beast came up to the gate and hung her head across and whinnied for apples or anything else we might have to offer. She submitted to being caught as if she had never done anything wrong in her life. When she was finally hitched to the buggy she wiggled her ears to shake off flies, and let her under lip droop, and looked about as spirited as a dowager cow.

After all, the driver was right. The evening is the pleasantest time of the day for driving. As we turned out on the road, the sun was going down, big and red, behind a thin cover of trees that made a sort of grill-work across its face. For a little while it seemed to reach from the tops of the trees to the earth, and then it smouldered down, leaving a few lines of bright cloud in the sky. The last crows were straggling off to some distant swamp to roost, and a flock of killdeer ran across the road on invisible legs that made them seem to be swimming a few inches above the ground. It was still light enough to see the first blades of wheat that were showing, in spite of the dry weather, and here and there we passed fields that were pleasantly dotted with black bundles of seed clover. I am told that the wheat has been put in with especial care this year, and most of it has been heavily fertilised. The ground has been so well worked that it held enough moisture to start the grain. If we only get a good rain soon, everything will be all right. We passed farm yards where milking was in progress, and occasional bursts of fierce squealing announced the feeding of pigs. It was the hour of doing chores, and the day's work being done, farmers were not afraid to stop to talk with passing neighbours and discuss the weather. There was a freight train busily shunting and puffing at the next village, but otherwise everything was still. The wind had died down at sunset. As the shadows began to close, the crickets, or whatever little creatures make the noise, began to chirp rhythmically. I am told that it is not the cricket that makes the sound, but a green insect that looks like a grasshopper. They never seem to make it when one is near them, so I have never managed to see one in action. I have often seen a cricket rubbing out his tune on his hind leg, and must say the sound is different. Whatever makes the sound that beats through the still autumn air, it is about the most characteristic music we have in the country just now. Presently a screech-owl whistled in an orchard, and I felt that it was the voice of solitude. When I looked up from the shadow-blurred earth, I found that the stars were all at their appointed stations.

It is all very well for excellent people who live in cities or barren parts of the country to have high notions about property rights and petty thieving. What I want to know is how the majority of these same people would act if they happened to be driving or walking through the country at night, and came to an orchard where the perfume of the ripe fall pippins overflowed the road. I came to such a spot, and it was very dark, and the tantalising odour "set my pugging tooth on edge." I wanted to be comforted with apples right there and then, and human nature is very weak. It was so dark, no one could see, and the road was deserted--but I escaped the temptation. As I told you in the first sentence, the driver will not stand without being hitched, and there were deep ditches on both sides of the road. Besides, I knew that I could get plenty of apples at home. But what if I had been walking, and there were no apples at home. I hate to think of it. While I was meditating on these things, and vowing to be easy with the next boy I caught with his blouse full of apples, I had to swerve the horse suddenly to avoid a collision with another buggy.

"Half the road, and all the ditch, please," said a girlish voice. She wanted to show the young man who was driving how clever and witty she was. No Sherlock Holmes was needed to detect that when she spoke she had a large bite of an apple tucked in her cheek. But far be it from me to give evidence against them. Had I not been sorely tempted myself a moment before I and perhaps these young people needed to be comforted with apples even more than I did, and were in condition to quote the rest of the text about being "sick of love." Having escaped the collision, I hurried home and unharnessed the driver in the dark. As I was turning her into the pasture, I patted her shoulder and held no grudges for the cutting-up of the afternoon.

NATURE'S POEMS

Poets, no matter what your fame,
I bid you one and all make way!
For I can put your best to shame
With poems of the common day.
Who cares for sonnet, ballad, lay,
That on the grass can lie at ease
And to the limit tuck away
The poems growing on my trees?

King Solomon, when he would tame
His heart--fordone in Love's affray--
For apples called, and ate the same,
But did not bid his harpers play.
And he of men was wisest. Yea,
He showed it by such deeds as these!
A bard himself, he well could weigh
The poems growing on my trees.

The Snow, with rounded cheeks aflame,
On which the dewy kisses stay;
The Spy, that like a blushing dame
Hides in the leaves her colours gay;
The Russet, like a sun-burned fay
Ravished from the Hesperides--
Too fair they seem for lips of clay,
The poems growing on my trees.

L'ENVOI

Prince, if you would taste them, say
The word and on my bended knees
I'll offer, without thought of pay,
The poems growing on my trees.

_Sept. 26._--It is many years since I cut corn before, and I don't care if it is many years before I cut corn again. It is slugging hard work from the first hill to the last. One doesn't even get a rest when tying the shocks, for the brittle stalks break until a fellow's temper is all frazzled. What's that you say? "It ought to be hauled straight from the field without shocking, and put in a silo!" Don't I know it! I've probably read more bulletins of the Department of Agriculture than you have, and, besides, I take two agricultural papers. I know what ought to be done with corn just as well as you do, so don't interrupt me, for I am sore from head to foot, and not in the best of humour. It is all right to talk about scientific methods, but there are times when one has to do things as best he can. I know there are machines for cutting corn, but one of them would cost more than the whole crop is worth, and there isn't one in the neighbourhood that can be hired. When the time came for the corn to be cut, I just had to cut it as my fathers had to cut it before me, and perhaps the Indians cut it in the same way before them. You have to cut your corn according to your patch, just as surely as you cut your coat according to your cloth. But I am not going to defend myself. A man doesn't defend himself unless he knows he is in the wrong, and I am not in the wrong. All I wanted to say when I started was that cutting corn is hard work. It doesn't appeal to me even as a form of exercise, but what a man sows--or plants--that he must reap; and having planted corn in the joyous springtime, I had to cut it when the melancholy days had come, the saddest of the year. The one consolation about it is that it will yield chicken and cow feed for the whole winter.

As a form of exercise, cutting corn combines most of the motions of wrestling, skipping the rope, and tossing the caber. You begin by getting a half-Nelson on a hill of corn, then you strike at it with a hoe, and the same skill is needed to keep from hitting your toes that is used in skipping. When you have tucked between your legs all the stalks you can sprawl along with, you take the unruly bundle in your arms and jam it against the shock. Then you take up the hoe and resume the original exercise. I think it would do very well as part of the training of a prize-fighter, though it might be too exhausting. I have no doubt that a hoe that has had its handle docked and its blade dished by a blacksmith is the best instrument to use, for most other cutting tools have been tried and rejected. I have seen everything used, from a carpenter's adze to a hay-knife, and none of them seemed to make the work easier. The Cuban machete, which is used for cutting sugar-cane in times of peace, and for carving the oppressors in time of war, always looked to me as if it would make a very plausible corn-cutter, but I never saw it tried. For some of the stalks I struck, I think a butcher's bone-saw would be best, though I suppose a strong man might cut them with a sharp axe. I am inclined to think it would be a good idea for a man who is cutting corn to have a caddie, the same as they have when playing golf. The boy could carry all kinds of cutting tools in a bag, and when you had sized up your hill of corn you could pick out the tool that seemed best in your judgment, and go at it. This is a sportsmanlike way of doing the work that should appeal to gentleman-farmers everywhere, but it would hardly do to let the hired man go at it in that way. The artistic side of work is not supposed to appeal to him, and he usually has the brute strength, or should have it, to plod along with a hoe, and cut the amount he should in a day. As I forgot to ask some one how much corn an able-bodied man is supposed to cut in a day, I shall not be definite on this point for fear I should expose myself to unfeeling laughter. Suffice it to say that, somehow, during the last couple of weeks in September, I cut five acres of corn in what Bill Nye would call "a rambling, desultory way." Of course, I didn't work at it all the time. Not at all. I spent a lot of time letting the ache get out of my bones and doctoring the cracks in my fingers.

_Sept. 27._--There are eight little pigs in one pen, little white beauties, and from time to time it falls to my lot to feed them. I always undertake the task cheerfully, because I like to look at them. They are still at the tender age of the little pigs we sometimes see in restaurant windows with apples in their mouths and "their vests unbuttoned." Not one of them but deserves the description of Charles Lamb:

"I speak not of your grown porkers--things between pig and pork--those hobbledehoys--but a young and tender suckling--guiltless as yet of the sty; his childish voice as yet not broken, but something between a childish treble and a grumble--the mild forerunner, or præludium of a grunt."

When I went to visit them this morning, they were all lying in the sun, in the little plot of pasture that has been fenced off for them. I did not blame them in the least for their indolence, for these are the days when everybody loves to lie in the sunshine, though, of course, it is a dreadful waste of time, except on Sunday afternoons, after church. I approached them quietly, and while I stood admiring their white plumpness, delicately touched with pink, I was glad to notice that Mother Goose was a true observer. She sang joyously:

"The little pigs sleep with their tails curled up."

Their eight little tails were twisted into eight curls so tight that I felt sure another twist would have lifted their hind feet off the ground. An unguarded step roused them, and then what excitement there was. Eight little voices were at once raised in protest at my slowness. Carefully spilling a little of the skim-milk "mash" into one end of the trough, I stepped back hastily and distributed the remainder evenly along the rest of it. The taste I had given them, however, was enough to get them all into action and reveal their characters. Really, one can't help liking little pigs. They are so human. For a moment I imagined myself a Professor Garner, and felt that I understood their language.

"Whee! whee! Willie got more than I did! Whee! Whee!

"Make Susie take her elbows--I mean, feet--out of my part of the trough!"

One little bully who did not like the table manners of his next neighbour jumped at him, and started to chew his ear. It was all a hurried scramble, and then a couple of them discovered that they were at the wrong end of the trough. Without a sound, they started to gobble the feed, while the others were still quarrelling and fighting. Right there I realised that I was not the first to observe the habit of pigs. There is a world of truth in the old saying we so often apply to men: "It is the still pig that gets the swill." Fortunately, the others soon noticed what was going on, and stopped squabbling to get their share. What pushing and gobbling there was then! It reminded me of the stock exchange, with a bull market in progress. They took no more interest in me than children do in their hostess at a birthday party after the ice-cream has been served, the human little rascals.

Some day I hope to have the leisure to write an adequate "Defence of the Pig." Now that Judge Jeffreys and Nero have been whitewashed and given good-conduct cards by the historians, I think that some one should speak a good word for the pigs. They have been very much maligned. And perhaps this is the right time to do it--after the pigs, both live and dressed--have been dragged through the mire of politics. To begin with, the pig is no more gross in his appetite than that much applauded "tame villatick fowl," the hen. As for cleanliness, give him a chance, and see how clean he can be. His dirtiness is due to the people who pen him up so that he can hardly stir. "Seek other cause 'gainst Rhoderick Dhu!" Then, consider how important the work of the pig has been in the making of Canada. He deserves a place in the gallery of the Makers of Canada, because the pioneers would have had a much harder time of it had they not been supported by plentiful supplies of fat pork. If the pig had his rights, he would be our national emblem, instead of the beaver. What has the beaver done for us, anyway? The pig, on the other hand, sustained our fathers in their fight against the wilderness, and yet his name is a name of scorn. Even the poets, in whom fair play is intuitive, have done scant justice to the pig. As a matter of fact, I can recall only one bit of poetry about the pig in Canadian literature, and that is McIntyre's epigram "On a hog exhibited at the Western Fair, which weighed 1000 pounds, and measured five-foot-nine from tip to tip":

"Pig had to do some routine work
To make a thousand pounds of pork;
But our stomach it doth not incline
To eat a hog five-foot-nine;
Let others eat enormous swine."

In clearing the country of snakes, the pig has been a veritable animal St. Patrick. Even the rattlesnake had to go down before him. Because of this, he deserves a place in heraldry second only to St. George the dragon-killer. In history, the pig has received frequent mention from the time of the prodigal son. Even to-day the reigning family of Servia proudly claims its descent from a militant swineherd, and do not both the United States and Canada boast of many pork-packing millionaires, who prove the importance of the pig to modern society? These are only a few of the points that might be developed in a "Defence of the Pig," and as the subject is one of the few on which a book has not yet been written, we may expect to have it written by some one before long.

I never think of pigs without remembering a dark night, many years ago, when they used to run half-wild, instead of being penned and fed scientifically. I was coming home late, and took a short-cut through the dark woods. I was whistling to keep my courage up, for even though I knew that there were no wolves or bears, there was something uncanny about the deep shadows. At last I came to a huge elm tree that had been cut down for a coon in the brave days when the coon-skin was worth more than a tree three feet in diameter and the labour it took to chop it down. It was late in the fall, and there were deep drifts of leaves beside every log. Climbing to the top of the fallen giant, I jumped down into a great drift--and then yelled with terror. The earth seemed to spring up under me and around me, as a drove of half-grown pigs that had taken shelter from the cold in the dry leaves began to scatter, squealing and "whoofing." They were every bit as scared as I was, and as they rushed about blindly they bowled me off my feet. My first thought was of wolves and bears, about which I had heard so much in my boyhood, but I soon realised what the trouble was. And yet, in the few seconds when I didn't know what I had tumbled into, I got a scare that made me wear my hair à la pompadour for weeks afterwards. Since then I have at different times tripped over a sleeping pig at night when walking past a straw stack, but I never got such a scare as I did in the woods. Perhaps that is because these modern pigs haven't so much steam in them as did the grunters we had when the saying "root hog or die" had an actual application. They had to root for their livings, and I have no doubt that there are still neighbourhoods that keep up feuds that were started by the predatory pigs of the early settlers. It was no easy matter to make rail-fences "horse-high and hog-tight," when they had to be built over cradle-holes, and those eager, hungry pigs could be depended on to find a hole if there was one; and if there wasn't, they were not beyond making one. Those pigs didn't pose before cameras and get their pictures in the agricultural papers, but if an acorn fell within half a mile of them, they would hear it, and get to it in time to catch it on the first bounce. We shall never see their like again.

And now to come back to our eight--did you ever see anything more contented-looking? Every one of them looks as snug as the cat after he has eaten the canary, and even a cat couldn't put more contentment into his purring than they do into their grunting. A couple of them are lying sprawled on their stomachs in the sun in an attitude which I would not hesitate to condemn as unnatural if I saw it in a picture. One is chewing a blade of grass, and no doubt meditating on the weather and the prospects of the food supply for the winter. Others are doing their best to do a little rooting in the baked ground, no doubt in the hope of getting a place to wallow in. Vain hope! Just look at the little fellow scratching himself against the end of the trough. He positively looks to be smiling, and the tone of his grunting tells clearly that he agrees with Josh Billings, who said: "The discomfort of itching is more than half made up by the pleasure of scratching." Taken altogether, these little pigs make as interesting and pretty a picture as the farm affords. And looking at them from a practical point of view, is there anything about the place that will better repay feeding and attention, with pork at the present price? But don't let us think of that. It is too tragic to think of these happy little fellows being turned into Wiltshire bacon. Let them enjoy the swill and sunshine and other good things of life while they may. It would not be such a bad thing if some of the rest of us could do the same.

_Sept. 30._--I should have known better, and, in fact, I did know better. I have known better for a long time. Yet I went to town to get empty apple boxes without putting on a waggon box or a hayrack. But I was going to bring home only a dozen boxes, and, when I went to hitch the driver to the one-horse waggon, I thought the cordwood rack it was provided with would carry the little load all right. I didn't even take the trouble to hunt up the stakes, so what I had with me was practically a platform with a stake at each corner. Still I was going to bring home only twelve empty boxes that would not weigh more than fifty pounds. I would manage all right. There was no need being fussy, especially as I was in a hurry. But when I got to the post office I found a postcard telling me that eighteen crates of honey pails were waiting at the station. I felt a vague uneasiness on getting this news, but concluded that I could bring them home with the apple boxes. I got the boxes first. It was amazing the amount of room they took compared with their weight. They covered the whole bottom of my rack. Nevertheless I piled them on, and started on a trot for the station. I didn't trot far. Those light boxes seemed to feel the jolting far worse than I did. Every time I struck a pebble they would bounce into the air, and, in spite of that law of physics which states that an object thrown up from a moving object will fall on the place from which it started, or words to that effect, those boxes never came down in the same spot. Before I had gone ten rods I had to stop to trim my load. When I had straightened the boxes so that they would ride I let the mare walk, and tried to figure out some way to pile on eighteen crates that would probably be very little heavier and every bit as slippery as what I had on.

The crates of honey pails were wide and flat, and took up about twice as much room as the apple boxes. I couldn't put two rows side by side. I had to pile them on top of one another, and I knew that there was trouble ahead. Moreover, I had to pile the apple boxes two deep, and I had had enough experience with them to know what that would mean. But having started I was going to see the thing through. I made a fairly neat job of the loading, and tried to hope that everything would be all right. Then I started. Two hundred and sixteen honey pails began to rattle with the first turn of the wheels. Not being used to such a racket the driver jumped. Two hundred and sixteen honey pails clanged and the wrestling began. By the time I got her under control, my pretty load looked as if it had been struck by a cyclone. It had shifted in about seven different directions. An apple box had fallen against a wheel, and the crates of pails looked as if they had been spilled aboard. As soon as the mare was quiet, I righted the load as well as I could without taking it all off and starting again from the bottom. By the time I had done this I had figured out that the only way I could keep the load straight would be to lie on top of it, wrap my legs around the hind end, my arms around the front end, and do the driving with my teeth. Of course, it would be a ridiculous sight for the village folk, who have a keen appreciation of everything of the kind, but I didn't care for that. However, I didn't put my plan into practice. After examining the lines I decided that I would not like the taste of them. When the driver was entirely quiet, I started her gently and crawled along the main street. Three times before I got to the home road I had to stop and fix my load. In doing this I lost my daily paper, and, by the time I had turned the corner, I was feeling real peevish.

When I had turned off the stone road I thought everything would be all right, but I was mistaken again. As the road has been graded and people drive to one side instead of on the middle, I found that the waggon was tilted just enough to start my ticklish load slipping. There was nothing for it but to let the horse walk at her own pleasure, while I devoted myself to pushing back the crates and boxes as they threatened to slip overboard. Now, the driver at her best is not a fast walker, but when allowed to take her own time you would need to sight on a couple of posts to see whether we were moving. She would swing her head around to bite a fly--and come to a full stop. When she started again she would swing her foot up to knock a fly off her belly--and stop again. I don't think I ever knew flies to be so plentiful. She was biting at them or striking at them all the time. But the slow motion had its advantages. The boxes and crates stopped slipping, and presently I resigned myself to my fate and began to look about me. After all a slow drive is best when one is trying to enjoy the country. It was a perfect autumn day, hoarfrost in the morning and midsummer heat at noon. The sky was cloudless, and not a breath of air was stirring. I had the road and the fields all to myself.

My enjoyment was suddenly disturbed by the appearance in the distance of what I took to be an automobile. These overgrown "road-lice" usually give the driver hysterics, and with the honey pails to bang and scatter we would probably have a wild time. Fortunately it turned out to be a waggon, and we got around the home corner safely. Then we came to the railway, and, as we crossed it, the waggon rolled forward and the mare started to trot. By talking gently and tugging on the lines I got her stopped before the load slipped off. I trimmed the boxes again and then crawled the rest of the distance home. When we reached the barn yard two crates slipped off, but I didn't mind much--in fact I felt triumphant because I had kept them from falling off sooner. I was an hour late for dinner and had to explain to every one just what had kept me, and how I managed to lose the daily paper. And when peace was restored, I made up my mind that the next time I go after light boxes of this kind I shall take a waggon and hayrack, even if I am going to bring home only one box.

OCTOBER

_Oct. 5._--Can husking corn be described as a sedentary occupation? You certainly sit down while at work, but before the day is over you sit in so many different ways that you really get considerable exercise. Some people use a milking-stool, some sit tailor-fashion, others kneel devoutly, and if it were not for the cold weather I believe some people would lie down beside the work and go to sleep. During the first forenoon I sampled all the different methods except lying down, and found them all equally uncomfortable. The simple fact is that when you go at it energetically, husking corn is really work. It has no holiday features that I have been able to discover. You work with both hands, and when you strike a stiff-necked ear you have to put forth as much strength that, as the realistic novelists say, the muscles on your back "stand out like knotted whipcords." Besides, when the field has a considerable acreage it is not simply a day's job, nor a week's job, but a month's job. Of course, you get used to it in time, and the more used to it you get the more sore your hands become between the thumb and forefinger through breaking off the ears. And there's another thing besides the sitting down that requires thinking out before you settle down to work. Is it better to sit facing the sun with the north wind blowing on the small of your back, or to sit with the wind in your face while the sun gives a nice, comfy feeling to your spine? I have tried both ways, but have not yet reached a definite conclusion.

A nail with a string tied to the head and a loop to go around your third finger makes an excellent substitute for the old hickory husking-peg whose end had been hardened in the fire. A sharp wire nail slips through the husks readily to make the opening tear that reveals the yellow grain. Then you bend the ear back over the sorest spot on your hand to break the cob, and the trick is done. When you are husking corn your mind is apt to be more on your tender hands than on your work, but still one has a chance to do a little thinking from time to time. Husking corn--in fact, all the work of this last harvest, such as digging potatoes, pulling roots, and caring for vegetables--brings one into a closer dealing with nature than the grain harvest earlier in the season. Wheat, oats, and barley are reaped by machinery and thrashed by machinery, so that your contact with them is never intimate. The things we are harvesting now we must attend to with our hands, and for that reason we seem to be receiving them directly from the hand of Nature. Being food for man and beast, these things represent true wealth as it comes to us directly from the soil. Every ear that is husked and every potato that is dug means a distinct addition to the wealth of the world. In this way the work of the farmer is superior to that of any other man. The more wealth the farmer produces, the more mouths will be fed and the cheaper the cost of living will be. Many people who have not given the matter thought imagine that the production of gold increases the wealth of the world. As a matter of fact, every dollar of gold that is produced reduces the buying power of every other dollar, and in that way makes living harder for men of fixed income or men who work on salary. The miner is simply providing us with more counters to be used in the handling of the natural wealth which is produced by the farmer. This is all very elementary, of course, but it helps to give a man a proper pride in his work. If farmers would think more of this aspect of their lives we might hear less grumbling.

There is a flock of quail somewhere in the cornfield, but as yet I have not seen them. Their gathering calls can be heard in the evening, and I have seen their dusting-place, but thus far I have not seen a feather of the quail themselves. Last Sunday I flushed a woodcock beside the Government drain, the first one I have ever seen in this neighbourhood. And that reminds me that I recently had a conversation with a sportsman who unburdened himself with considerable vigour regarding our game laws. To begin with, he said that, as far as woodcock are concerned, our laws are especially designed to protect woodcock for American hunters. Most of the woodcock migrate before the season for them opens in Canada. Another complaint is that, as at present administered, the game laws simply keep law-abiding sportsmen from getting any game. No true sportsman will do any shooting in the close season, but long before the season opens for quail, partridge, woodcock, and squirrels, the country is hunted out by people who have no regard for the law. Town and country boys who have guns take to the woods and fields early in the season and kill everything they come across. As there are no funds to pay the game wardens, these offenders against the law are seldom or never prosecuted, and practically all the game goes to them. This sportsman suggested a remedy that should meet with the approval of every one interested in the preservation of game. He urges that all guns be registered and a gun tax levied that would pay for wardens who would properly enforce the law. This would not only provide the necessary machinery for enforcing the game laws, but would make the ownership of a gun a matter requiring consideration. Something must be done if we who have a respect for the law are to get any of our corn-fed quail and squirrels.

The coon-hunting season is on again, and almost every night one can hear the barking of coon dogs. There has been a change in the method of procedure of coon hunters, however. The ringing of the axes no longer disturbs the stillness, and you never hear at midnight the crash of a falling tree. Trees are now worth more than many coonskins, and the farmer who heard coon hunters chopping in his woods would not only make a roar, but would probably chase off the hunters with a fence stake. The present method is to hunt on moonlight nights and try to bring down the coons with a rifle. I am told that if the barrel is whitened with chalk it is possible to sight the gun fairly accurately. If the coon happens to be treed where it is not too hard to get at, the hunter straps on telephone pole climbers and shins up the tree. But with all these improvements coon hunting is not what it used to be--chiefly because the farmers do not raise as many melons as they used to. I remember--but no, I guess I'll not tell about it.

The husking was varied by an exciting rat hunt. Under one of the shocks there was a surprising pile of earth, fully two feet high. It was evidently the home of a family of rats, and as these creatures have no redeeming features it was decided to destroy them. They are filthy, destructive, disease-bearing vermin, and to kill them is a public service. As the ground was mellow, it was easy to follow the winding tunnels that went out on every side. These tunnels had little chambers every yard or two, evidently to enable the rats to turn round if pursued, but I was surprised to find that every tunnel ended without a hole leading to the surface. I thought that every creature that burrows in the earth has a back door as well as a front door to his home, but these rats had only one hole for going in or out. They evidently depended for safety on their intricate system of tunnels, and they had a system that must have equalled the one in the Portland estates in England or the kind you read about in old romances. The tunnels were so near the surface that they broke through when stepped on, and it was not hard to follow them and throw them open with a fork-handle. After yards of tunnels had been opened rats began to pop out--but there is no need describing the carnage. One old rat and twelve that were partly grown were rooted out and killed. It was an unpleasant duty, but a duty nevertheless. If left to themselves those rats would have eaten and destroyed as much corn as several hogs. While it is a scientific fact that man and the rats have discovered and conquered the world together there is war between them, and there will be war until the end of time.

After the day's husking comes the job of binding up the cornstalks and when the stalks are dry it is just about the meannest job imaginable. You pick out the softest, juiciest-looking stalk you can find, bend it between the joints and proceed to tie up an armful of stalks that scratch your wrists and face, and just as you are starting to twist the ends into a knot the wretched thing breaks and you have to start the whole performance over again. After this has happened a few times your temper begins to slip cogs and your language becomes "painful and frequent and free." Of course it had the advantage of making me forget how stiff my joints were from sitting on the cold ground, and before I knew it I was warm clean through, but that kind of warmth is not the kind of warmth a fellow wants. I grumbled so much about this feature of the husking that a man of experience asked why I did not use binder twine. That solved the difficulty, and the husking is being done in a proper frame of mind. Although the yield is not remarkable for quantity, the ears are large and the grain is sound.

_Oct. 8._--There is a pear tree that is hemmed in on one side by an apple tree and on the other by an oak. The result is that the lower branches have died and fallen off and the fruit grows from thirty to forty feet above the ground. For some time past the children had been picking up the wind-falls, ripening them in the bureau drawers, and asking when I was going to pick the pears. When it comes to lofty and fancy climbing I have to do it myself. The youngsters do enough climbing to tear their clothes, but that is all. When we got ready to pick the apples I decided to begin by picking the pears. I have a weakness for these particular pears that made me want to harvest them. This was the only kind on the farm when I was a boy and I have never found others quite like them. They are not of any of the standard varieties, and as they are not good keepers or particularly good for preserves they are not in favour with thrifty people. But as eating pears they are unrivalled. When picked at the right time and hidden in a hay-mow for a few weeks they used to be as delicious to a predatory small boy as hoarded beechnuts to a red squirrel. Even when ripened among the clothes in a bureau drawer they are good enough, though they lack the tang of stolen fruit. This year there was about a bushel on the tree in spite of the spring frost that destroyed most of the blossoms. The longest ladder on the place barely reached to the first branches, but when I had pulled myself up among the fruit I was greatly rewarded. About the first thing that caught my eye was a big, perfect pear lying in a little nest of twigs where several branches were crossing one another. It had evidently ripened early, fallen into this hiding place, and then mellowed in the sun and wind. As I picked it up my thumb made a dent in its soft flesh. A moment later I had sunk my teeth in its rosy, juicy side and my palate was quivering with joy. It had the real hay-mow flavour and after the first taste I got the stolen fruit tang, for a voice floated up from below,

"Aw, gimme a bite!"

"All right! Come up and get it!" I exulted. Making myself comfortable in a fork of the tree I proceeded with my little banquet, and before it was done I was derisively singing an old schoolboy refrain:

"Billy! Dey ain't goin' to be no core!"

Feeling greatly refreshed I then picked the pears.

It was no easy job, for the top branches were long and slim, and as I swung around and took chances I felt that Calverly knew what he was talking about when he described the monkeys as clinging,

"With ape-like glee,
By the teeth or tail or eyelid
To the slippery mango tree."

While occupying my position of vantage I had a rush of primordial feelings that made me almost a believer in the Darwinian theory. It could be nothing but the stirring of some hereditary emotion that made me long to throw pears at the people below who were sending up exclamations of caution and advice. There would be a joy in it such as must have been felt by our ancestors when:

"Side by side 'twas theirs to ravage
The potato ground and cut
Down the unsuspecting savage
With the well-aimed cocoanut."

Before my task was finished I was led to reflect that a prehensile tail must be a great advantage to a climber. Yet there can be no advantage without its penalty. I remember a joke in _Life_ about a monkey that was complaining because it had slipped and sprained its tail.

While picking the pears I had a chance to overlook the activities of the whole neighbourhood, but my interest was largely centred in my own cornfield, where a band of original Canadians, Indians, were busy husking. That corn had been hanging over me like an incubus, for I thought I would have to husk it all myself, but

"The red man came, the roaming hunter tribe,"

and I promptly made a treaty with them. But the consideration was not glass beads and red cotton handkerchiefs. Not at all. They are civilised--as civilised as an imported hired man. They insisted on getting five and a half cents a bushel--"and find themselves." Reflecting that even at that price I would not make much more than board wages, I agreed to pay. And as I looked at the cornfield from the pear tree I felt glad that I had done so, for real judges have estimated that there will be at least five hundred bushels. I will have enough to do in hauling home the ears and stalks. The piles of yellow ears delighted my eye, and then I noticed the golden sprinkling of pumpkins in the field, and I called down orders for pies. Somehow, in this country life our appetites are always with us.

Looked at from the height I was occupying, the world seemed more alive than usual. I could see men working in their fields or about their buildings for a mile or two in every direction. Ordinarily we see only the people and animals on our own farms, and are oppressed by a sense of loneliness. From my tree-top I could see that I really have neighbours. As I realised this I was struck by the thought that all our activities take place within a few feet of the ground. In spite of our boasted freedom of action we are the slaves of the law of gravity which keeps us "crawling 'twixt the earth and heaven." But because we can walk and run and travel in trains, and even fly a little, we think ourselves entirely free and are not conscious of the fact that gravity binds us as with chains. Who knows but in a similar way our actions, both moral and intellectual, are governed by laws of which we are unconscious? Perhaps if we could make our analysis keen enough we would find that our lives impinge on the peripheries of other spheres than that of the earth, and that we are whirled around on them forever like Ixion on his wheel. Such a discovery would settle to the satisfaction of all the endless debate regarding predestination and free will. But it does not do to indulge in such metaphysical flights while clambering around in a tree forty feet from the ground. They might make us giddy, and then "What a fall would be there, my fellow-countrymen." Still it was worth the climb to get away for a little while from the flatness of things and to realise that there is much in life that is missed by the sensible people who keep their feet constantly on the ground. We need an occasional breath from the heights, and I am inclined to think there was much wisdom in the words of the poetess who closed a notable poem in a recent number of _The Forum_ with the couplet:

"He whose soul is flat, the sky
Will cave in on him by and by."