3o8
��Among- the Haymakers.
��and pulled in a nice string of pickerel that was fair to see, and eat, too. Pluck will win, even at the end of an old fish-pole. Thus ended the fishing excursion. All wet outside — oh, my ! how it did rain — and probably some of us something so innerly. Shades of Izaak Walton ! Are such the real joys of angling you have be- siuiled us with so many hours ?
Brio-ht visions of hunting four- leaved clover with the farmer's red- cheeked daughter, who, as we recol- lect, could do her share of raking h'ay, loom up in the memory. It hap- pened, too, on some Sunday when we truants ought to have been at church. I wonder what has become of that little blue-eyed maiden we made love to in those olden summer days? Is she yet single, or did she marry a man for his money and then divorce him?
It was considered lucky to hire at a place where they had plenty to eat, for at some they notoriously skinched the help. Uncle Zeke's was one of the good ones. The old man would bring a panful of doughnuts out into the field. The men would take a doughnut in one hand and drag a loafer with the other. When they came to the barn with hay, Aunt Mar- tha gave them each a piece of mince pie to eat on the way to the field. No time was wasted there, not even in eating. "The idee is, it pays to feed well," he would say with a pe- culiar wink of the left eye. He did get a "sight" of work out of his help. He was a deacon and a tem- perance man, swore as deacons do, and drank in the orthodox way. He put into liis cellar every fall ten bar- rels of cider. He did not sell it,
��never gave away any. It was an un- solved mystery what became of it, the most reasonable theory being that it leaked into the cellar. He was a great meeting hand — punctual in his pew on Sunday, where he enjoyed a comfortable nap, but he never con- sidered it wicked for his men to mend fence in the afternoon, provided they had attended church.
Your farmer is generally weather- wise, and just enough superstitious to make him interesting. If the cows come to the barn before night, if the moon has a circle around it, if the water boils away in the kettle, if the young robbins twitter in the branches, if the tree-toad or loon halloos, they are, to these credulous people, infal- lible sio;ns of rain, and all hav fit to be housed is hurriedly got to the barns.
The "big day" in haying was when the meadow was cut, especially if you worked in water up to your knees — the early ride over the rough country road while the fresh smell of morning lingered on every green thing around, and the silver web of gossamer glistened by the wayside, the noon lunch eaten in the delicious shade of some tree, the ride home at night on the hay.
How many times have I come from the singing meadows as the dews of night were falling, — albeit we were tired as dogs, wet as drowned rats, and hungry as bears : still those days had their pleasant side. The least eventful life furnishes the most eu- joyment after all. And as we look back to tlie quiet single years, we can almost wish to live that life over anew, and be a barefoot boy again on that little hillside farm.
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