 The Farmer's Boy by Clifton Johnson. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Recording by Elsie. The Farmer's Boy by Clifton Johnson. Prefatory note. In what this volume tells of The Farmer's Boy, readers will find that many episodes and interests in the life of the boy are not even mentioned. One book indeed would not contain them all. There is, however, one important omission that is intentional. His school life. The reason for this is that the writer treated the subject in detail in a volume uniform with this, published last year. Its title is The Country School in New England, and its publishers are The Appleton and Company of New York. It is also to be explained that, while the present volume is primarily about the boy on the farm, it is intended that the rest of the family, in particular the girl, shall not altogether lack attention, either in text or pictures. Clifton Johnson, Hadley Math, June 1894. Part One, Winter. On New Year's morning, the first thing the boy hears is the voice of his father calling from the foot of the stairs. Come, Frank, time to get up. You may perhaps imagine that the boy leaps lightly from his bed and that he is soon clattering merrily down the stairs to the tune of his own whistle. But the real live boy, who will fit so romantic and pretty and impression, it would be hard to find. Our boy, Frank, is so unheroic as to barely grunt out a response that shall give his father to understand that he has heard him. And then he turns over and slumbers again. It is six o'clock. The first gray hints of the coming day have begun to penetrate the little chamber. The boy's clothing lies in a heap on the floor, just where he jumped out of it in his haste the night before, to get out of the frosty atmosphere and into his bed. In one corner of the room is a decrepit chair, whose cane-seat bottom had some time ago increased its original leakiness to such a degree that it had been judged unsuited to the pretensions of the living room below the stairs and been banished to the chambers. An old trunk with a cloth covered thrown over it and a stand with a cracked little mirror above are the other most striking articles of furnishing. The walls of the room are not papered, and where the bed stands the bed posts have bruised the plaster so that you catch a glimpse or two of the lath behind. Yet the walls are not so bare as they might be, for the vacant space is made interesting by a large legal-looking certificate that affirms that the boy's father by the payment of $30 has been made a life-member of the whole missionary society. The boy is rather proud of this fact, for though he does not know what it all means, he feels sure it is something good and religious. He often reads the certificate and ciphers out the names of the distinguished men who have put their signatures at the foot of the document, and he likes to look at the Bible scene pictured at the top and takes pleasure in the elaborate frame all made out of hemlock and pine cones. He is tempted to the belief that he is blessed above most boys and having a father who has the honor to be a life-member of the whole missionary society and who possesses such a certificate in such a frame. Indeed he has gone much further than this upon occasion and has complacently concluded that his folks were pretty sure of going to heaven in the end. At any rate, their chances were better than those of most of the neighbors. He knew very well his folks were more religious than most, and wasn't his father a life-member of the whole missionary society? Our boy did not think these thoughts on New Year's morning. Getting uptime came while it was still too dark to make out much besides the dim shapes of the articles about the room. Even the gaily-colored soap advertisement he had hung next to the missionary certificate was dull and shapeless, and the garments, depending from the long row of nails in the wall at the foot of the bed, could not be told apart. The morning is very cold. The window panes are rhymed with frost so that hardly a spot of clear glass remains untouched, and there is a cloudy puff of vapor from among the pillows with the boys every outgoing breath. The boy's father, after he had properly warned his son of the approach of day, made the kitchen fire and went out to the barn to feed the cattle. When he returns to the house he appears to be astonished that Frank has not come down. The one would think he might have got used to it by this time. He stalks to the upstairs door and says, Intonesune's sternness seems to prophesy dire things if not met with prompt obedience. Frank, do you hear me? I called you a quarter an hour ago. I want you to get up right off. Coming, says Frank, and he rubs his eyes and tries to muster resolution to get into the cold. Well, it's about time, returns his father, and you better be spry about it, too. When you sleep on a feather bed it lets you down into its yielding mass so that if you have enough clothes on top you can sleep in tropical contentment. There is no chance for the frost to get in at any of the corners. Frank felt that his happiness would be complete were he allowed to doze on half the morning in his snug nest, but he knew it was hopeless aspiring to such bliss, and a few minutes later he appeared downstairs, and the way he appeared was this. His hair was tumbled topsy-turvy, his eyes had still a sleepy droop, and he was in his shirt sleeves and stocking feet. He had no fondness for freezing in his room any longer than was necessary after he was once out of bed, and he always left such garments as he could spare downstairs by the stove. Of course he had not washed, that he would do just before breakfast at the kitchen sink after the outdoor work was done. The half-dressed boy, as soon as he gets downstairs, hastens to make friends with the sitting-room stove where a fire with the aid of chunks has been kept all night. A light is burning in the kitchen, and his mother is clattering about there, thawing things out and getting breakfast. The boy hugs the stove as close as nature of it will allow, and turns himself this way and that to let the heat soak in thoroughly all around. Then he puts on the heavy pair of shoes he left the night before in a comfortable place back of the stove, gets his collar on and his vest and coat, pulls a cap down over his ears, and shuffles off to the barn. Frank is thirteen years old, but he has been one of the workers whom it has seemed necessary to stir out the first thing in the morning for years back. He knew how to milk when he was seven, and he began to bring in wood, a stick at a time, about as soon as he could walk. He did not grumble at his lot nor think it a hard one, nor would he had it been ten times worse. Indeed, children, unless set a bad example by the complaining habits of their elders, or because they are spoiled by petty and lack of employment, accept things as they find them and make the best of them. Even the farm debt, which may burden the elders very heavily and keep all the family on the borders of shabbiness for years, makes but a light and occasional impression on the youngsters. Then as to those accidents that are continually happening on the farm, and that are so heartbreaking and discouraging to the poorer ones, the collapse of a wagon, the sickness of the best cow, the death of the old horse, the giving out of the kitchen stove so that a new one is absolutely necessary, the children may shed a few tears, but work and the little pleasures they so readily discover under the most untoward conditions soon make the sun shine again, and the mists of trouble melt into forgetfulness. Boys on small farms which have only two or three cows do not milk regularly. The farmer or an older brother does it. But if the rest of them are away from home or too busy with other work, the boy is called upon. Perhaps the father has to go so many miles over the hills to market that he will not get home until well on in the evening. In that case you find the boy at nightfall poking about the glooms of the barn with a lantern, and doing all the odd jobs that need to be done before he can milk. When these are finished the little fellow gets the big tin pail at the house, hangs his lantern on a nail in the stable and sits down beside one of the cows. He sets the milk streams playing a pleasant tune on the resonant bottom of the pail, and from time to time snuggles his head up against the cow for the sake of the warmth. If the cow gives the pailful his knees begin to ache and shake with the weight of the milk before he is done, and his fingers grow cramped and stiff with their long continued action. However the boy always perseveres to the end, and if when he takes the milk in his mother says he has got more than his paw does, he grows an inch taller in conscious pride of his merits. There is a difference in cows. Some require a good deal more muscle than others to bring the milk. Some are skittish. One of these uneasy cows will keep whacking you on the ear with her tail every minute or two all through the milking, and at the same time the coarse and not overclean tuft of hair on the end will go stinging along your cheek. Then the cow will be continually stepping away from you sideways, and you have to keep edging after her with your stool. These unexpected and uncalled for dodges make the streams of milk go astray, and you get your overalls and boots well splashed as one of the results. Another is that you lose your temper, and give the cow a fierce wrap with your fist. That makes matters worse instead of better. The cow seems to have no notion of what you are chastising her for and gets livelier than ever. It sometimes happens in the end that the cow gives the boy a sudden poke with a hind foot that sends him sprawling, pale, stool, and all. Then the boy feels that his cup of sorrow has run over. He knows that his pale of milk had. When a boy gets into trouble, he always feels that the best thing he can do is to go and hunt up his mother. That is what our boy, who met disaster in the cow's table, did. He left his lantern behind, but he carried in the pale with a dribble of milk and foam that was still left in the bottom. His mother was cutting a loaf of bread on the supper table. Are you through so soon, she asked? Why, Johnny, what is the matter? She says, noticing his woe-begone face. The cow kicked me, replies Johnny. His mother gets excited and steps over to examine him. Well, I should say so, she exclaimed. You're completely plastered from head to foot. Spilt all the milk, too, didn't it? Well, well, what's the matter with the old cow? I don't know, replied Johnny tearfully. She just up and kicked me right over. Well, now, Johnny, never mind, said his mother soothingly. You didn't try to milk her any more tonight. You better tie her legs together next time when you milk. She's real hateful that cow is. I've seen the way she'll hook around the other cows lots of times. Here, you run into the bedroom and I'll get your Sunday clothes for you to change into. Wait a minute, Tar, lay down a newspaper for you to put your old duds onto. A little later Johnny went out to the barn and brought in the lantern. Then he sat down to supper, and by the time he had eaten ten mouthfuls of bread and milk he felt entirely comforted and blissful after his late trials. The boy's usual work at night was to let the cows in from the barnyard where they had been standing. To get down hay and cut up stalks for them, water and feed the horses, bring in wood, not forgetting kindlings for the kitchen stove and chunks to keep the sitting room fire overnight, and last but not least he had to do all the odd helping his father happen to call on him for. The boy enjoyed most of this more or less, but his real happiness came when work was done and he could wash up and sit down to his supper. The consciousness that he had got through the day's labor, the comfort of the indoor warmth, the keen appetite he had won, all combined to give such a complacency, both physical and mental, as might move many a grown-up and pampered son of fortune to envy. The boy usually spends his evenings very quietly. He studies his lessons on the kitchen table where he draws up close to the sitting room fire and reads a story paper. There is not so much literature in the average family but that the boy will go through this paper from beginning to end, advertisements and all, and the pictures half a dozen times over. In the end the paper is laid away in a closet upstairs and when he happens on doll times and doesn't know what else to do with himself, he wanders up there and delves in this pile of papers. He finds it very pleasant too, stirring up the echoes of past enjoyment by renewed acquaintance with the stories and pictures he had found interesting long before. Evenings are varied with family talks and sometimes the boy induces his grandfather to repeat some old rhymes, tell a story, or sing a song. When there are several children in the family things often become quite lively of an evening. The older children are called upon to muse the younger ones and they have some high times. There are lots of fun and noise and squawking too and some energetic remarks and actions on the part of the elders calculated to put a sudden stop to certain of the most enterprising and reckless of the proceedings. The baby is a continual subject of solicitude. His tottering steps give him many a fall anyway and he aspires to climb everything climbable and if he doesn't tumble down two or three times getting up he is pretty sure to do it after the accomplishment of his ambition. Then he makes astonishing expeditions on his hands and knees. You feel yourself liable to stumble over and annihilate him almost anywhere. The parents realize these things that any wonder when the rest of the flock gets to flying around the room full tilt that they become alarmed for the baby and that their voices get raspy and forceful. Blind man's buff and tag and general skirmishing are not altogether suitable to the little room where besides the chairs and the lounge and organ there's a hot stove and table with a lamp on it. You need some practice to get much satisfaction from a conversation carried on amid the hubbub. You have to shout every word and if the children happen to have a special fondness for you they do most of their tumbling right around your chair. Some of the children's best times come when the father and mother throw off all other cares and thoughts and become for the time being their companions in the evening enjoyment. What roaring fun they have when Papa plays wheelbarrow with them and puzzles them with some of the sleight of hand tricks he learned when he was young. Or when mama becomes a much entertained listener while the oldest boy speaks a piece and rolls his voice and keeps his arm waving and gestures from beginning to end. The other children are quite overpowered by the larger boy's eloquence. Even the baby sits in quiet on the floor and let his mouth drop open in astonishment. The mother is apt to be more in sympathy with these goings on than the father. And I fancy it is on such occasions as he happens to be absent that they have most of this sort of celebration. At such a time too the children wax confidential and tell what they intend to be when they grow up. This one will be a storekeeper. This one will be a minister. This one a doctor. This one a singer. They all intend to be rich and famous and to do some fine things for their mother some day. They do not pick out any of the callings for love of gain primarily, but because they think they will enjoy the life. Indeed, when Tommy said he was going to be a minister, the reason he gave for this desire was that he wanted to ring the bell every Sunday. Bedtime comes on a progressive scale, aged by the age of the individual. First the baby is metamorphosed and tucked away in his crib. Then the three-year-old goes through a lingering process of preparation. And after a little run in his nightgown around the room he is stowed away in crib number two and his mother sings him a lullaby or a song from Gospel hymns. And that fixes him for the night. These two occupy the same sleeping room as the parents and it adjoins the sitting room. The door has been open all evening and is comfortably warm. Girls and boys of eight or ten years old would take their lamps and march off to the cold upper chambers at eight o'clock or before. Some of the upper rooms may have a stovepipe running through which serves to blunt the edge of the cold a trifle, or there may be a register or hole in the floor to allow the heat to come up from below. But as a rule the chambers are shivery places in winter and when the youngsters jump in between the icy sheets, their teeth are set chattering and it is some minutes before the delightful warmth which follows gains its gradual ascendancy. The boy who sits up as late as his elders is usually well started in his teens. The children are not inclined to complain of early hours unless something uncommon is going on. They are tired enough by bedtime. Even the older members of the family are physically weary with the day's work and the evening talk is apt to be lagging and sleepy in its tone and the father gets to yawning over his reading and the mother to nodding over her sewing. Many times the chiefs of the household will start bedward soon after eight and as to the growing boy he usually disregards the privilege of late hours and takes himself off at whatever time after supper his tiredness begins to get overpowering. It would be difficult to say surely that the boy's room I described early in this chapter was an average one. The boy is not coddled with the best room in the house. In some dwellings the upper story has but two or three rooms that are entirely furnished. The rest is open space roughly floored and with no ceiling but the rafters and boards of the roof. There are boys who have a bed or two in such quarters as these or in a little half-girret room in the L. These unfinished quarters are the less agreeable if the roof happens to be leaky. Sounds of dripping water or sifting snow within one's room are not pleasant. On the other hand there are plenty of boys who have rooms with striped paper on the walls and possibly a red carpet underfoot, not to speak of other things no less ornate. In the matter of knick-knacks most boys do not fill their rooms to any extent with them. The girls are more apt to do this. But a boy is pretty sure to have some treasures in his room. He is not very particular where he stores them and he is likely to have some severe trials about house cleaning time. His mother fails to appreciate the value of his special belongings and is not in sympathy with his method of placing them. They get disarranged and thrown away. If fortune favors the boy with the drawers of an old bureau, he is fairly safe but things he puts on the shelf and stand and especially those he puts right along there in a row under the head of the bed? Oh, where are they? A winter breakfast on a farm is over about sunrise. All the rolling hills near and far lie pure and white beneath the dome of blue and they sparkle with many a frosty diamond and sunward gleam and dazzling radiance. I doubt if the boy cares very much about this. He is no stickler for beauty and movements affect him usually but mildly as a matter of beauty or sentiment though in a simple way many things touch him to a degree. But commonly the phase that presents itself uppermost is a physical one. The sun shines on the snow, it blinds his eyes. A gray day is the dismal forerunner of a storm. Sunsets, unless particularly gaudy, have no interest except as they suggest some weather sign. He delights more in days that are crystal clear when every object in the distant hills and valleys stands sharply distinct than in the mellow days that soften the landscape with their gauzy blues. He loves action, not dreams. Boys, like animals, feel a friskiness in their bones on the approach of a storm. They will run and shout then for the mere pleasure of it and play of whatever sort gets an added zest. It may be the dead of winter, but that does not keep them indoors. If the wind blows a gale and whistles and rattles about the home buildings and makes the trees crack and creak so much the better nor will the onset of the storm itself drive them indoors. The whirling flakes may increase and number till they blur all the landscape and go seething and shifting windrows over every hillock yet it will be some time before the children will pause in their sliding, skating, or running to think of the indoor fire. When they do go in it is as if all the outdoor breezes had gained sudden entrance. They all come tumbling through the door with a bang and a rush and there is a scattering of clinging snow when they pull off their wraps and throw them into convenient chairs or corners. They declare they are almost frozen as they stamp their feet about the kitchen fire and hug their elbows to their bodies and rub their fingers over the stove's iron top. Well, why didn't you come in before then? asks their mother. Oh, we was playing, is the answer. We've been having a lot of fun. The snow's drifted up the road so it's over our shoes now. You better take off your shoes if you've got any snow in them, the mother says. I declare how you have slopped up the floor and you've made it cold as a barn here coming in all in a lump that way. Here, Johnny, don't you go into the sitting room till you get kind of dried off and decent. I just wanted to get the cat, says Johnny. Well, you can't go in on the carpet with such looking shoes cat or no cat, is his mother's response. Meanwhile, she has taken her broom and brushed out on the piazza some of the snow lumps and puddles of water the children have scattered. The indoor stoves are an important item in the boy's winter life. It is a matter of perpetual astonishment to him how much wood those stoves will burn. He has to bring it all in, and he finds it as much of a jewellery as his sister does the everlasting washing and wiping of the dishes. It is his duty to fill the wood boxes about nightfall each day. The wood shed is half dark, and the day has lost every particle of glow and warmth. He can rarely get up his resolution to the point of filling the wood boxes chuck full. He puts in what he thinks will do and lives in hope he will not be disturbed at other plans by having to replenish the stock before the regulation time the night following. Sometimes he tries to avoid the responsibility of a doubtfully filled wood box by referring the case to his mother. Is that enough, Mama? He asks. Well, have you filled it? She asks. It's pretty full, replies the boy. Well, perhaps that'll do, responds his mother sympathetically, and the boy becomes at once conscious, free, and cheerful. All through the day when the boy is in the home neighborhood, he is continually resorting to the stoves to get warmed up. Every time he comes in, he makes a few passes over the stove with his hands, and he must be crowded for time if he cannot take a turn or two before the fire to give the heat a chance at all sides. If he has still more leisure, he gets an apple from the cellar or a cookie from the pantry and eats it while he warms up, or he goes in and sits by the sitting-room stove and reads a little in the paper. One curious thing he early finds out is that he gets cold much quicker while he is working than when he is playing. Probably the majority of New England boys spend most of the winter in school. Though in the hill towns where roads are bad and houses much scattered, the smaller schools are closed. While he attends school, the boy has not much time for anything but the home chores. But on Saturdays and in vacation, he may at times go into the woods with a man. There is no small excitement in clinging to the sled as it pitches along the rough wood roads amid a clanking of chains and the shouts of the driver. The man who is familiar with the work seems to have no hesitation in driving anywhere and over all sorts of obstacles. The boy does not know whether he is most exhilarated or frightened, but he has no thought of showing a lack of courage and he hangs on and when he gets to the end of the journey thinks he has been having some great fun. The boy has his own small acts and is all eagerness to prove his virtues as a woodsman. He whacks away energetically at some of the young girls and when he brings a sapling four inches through to the ground he is triumphant and wants all the others to look and see what he has done. He finds himself getting into quite a sweat over his work and he has to roll it up his earlaps and get his overcoat off and hang it on a stump. Then he digs into the work again. In time the labor becomes monotonous to him and he has moved to tramp through the snows and investigate the work of the others. There is his father making a clean wide gash in the sight of a great hemlock. Every blow tells and seems to go just where he wanted it to. The boy wonders why when he cuts off a tree he makes his cut so jagged. He stands a long time watching his father's chips fly and then gains a safe distance to see the tree tremble and totter as the opposite cuts deepen at the base near its heart. What a mighty crash it makes when it falls. How the snow flies and the branches snap. The boy is awed for the moment. Then is fired with enthusiasm and rushes in with his small axe to help trim off the branches. After a time there comes a willingness that his father should finish the operation and he wanders off to see how the others are getting on. By and by he stirs up the neighborhood with shouts to the effect that he has found some tracks. His mind immediately becomes chaotic with ideas of hunting and trapping. Now that he has begun to notice he finds frequent other traps and some he is pretty sure are those of foxes and some of rabbits and some of squirrels where the woods are just full of game. He will bring out his box trap tomorrow and the certainty grows on him that he will not only get some creatures that will prove a pleasant addition to the family larder but will have some furs nailed up on the side of the barn that will bring him a nice little sum of pocket money. That evening he brought out the box trap and got it into practice and made all the younger children wild with excitement over the tracks he had seen in his plans for trapping. They all wanted to share and were greatly disappointed the next day when their father would not let them go too. The boy set his trap and moved it every few days to what he thought would prove a more favorable place but he had no luck to boast of. Yet he caught something three times. The first time he had the trap set in an evergreen thicket in a little space almost bare of snow. He was pleased enough one day to find the trap sprung and it once became all eagerness to know what he had inside. He pulled out the spindle at the back and looked in but the tiny hole did not let in light enough. Very cautiously he lifted the lid of trifle still nothing was to be seen and he feared the trap had sprung itself. When he ventured to raise the lid a bit more a little slim legged field mouse leaped out. The boy clapped the lid down hard but the mouse hopped away and in a flash had disappeared in a hole at the foot of a small tree. The boy was disappointed in having even such a creature escape him. The next time whatever it was he caught not a hole through the corner of the box and had gone about its business when our boy made his morning visit to the trap. Then he took the trap home and lined the inside with tin. He had no luck for some days after and finally forgot the trap altogether. It was not till spring that he happened upon it again. He felt the tingle of the old excitement in his veins when he saw that the lid was down. He opened it with all the caution born of experience but the red squirrel which was within had been long dead and when the boy thought of its slow death by starvation in that dark box he felt that he would never want to trap anymore in that way. The boy finds the woods much more enjoyable than the wood pile when it is deposited in the home yard. He knows that as long as there is a stick of it left he will never have a moment of leisure that will not be liable to be interrupted with a suggestion that he go out and shake the saw a while. The hardest woods that make the hottest fire are the ones that the saw bites into the most slowly and are most discouraging. The best the boy can do is to hunt out such soft wood as the pile contains and all the small sticks. He makes some variety in his labor by pulling up the sawed sticks and a bulwark to keep the wind off. Only it has to be acknowledged that he never really succeeds in accomplishing this purpose. But the unsolved pile grows gradually smaller and his folks are not so severe that they expect the boy to do a man's work or to keep at it as steadily. He stops now and then to play with the smaller children and to go to the house to see what time it is or to get something to eat. Besides, his father works with him a good deal and if there are times when the minutes go slowly the days as a whole slip along quickly. And before the boy is aware winter is at an end if the wood pile isn't. End of Part 1, Winter. Part 2 of The Farmer's Boy by Clifton Johnson This LibriVox recording is in the public domain. Read for you by Chiquito Craster. Spring. Where the coming of March comes spring according to the Almanac In New England the snowstorms and wintery gales hold sway often to the edge of April. Yet you can generally look for some vigorous thoughts before the end of the month. There are occasional days of such warmth and quiet that you can fairly hear the snow melt and the air is full of the tinkle of running brooks. You catch the sound of a woodpecker tapping in the orchard and the small boy tumbles into the house jubilant over the fact that he has seen a bluebird sitting through the branches of the elm before the house. All the children make haste to run out into the yard to see the sight. Even the mother throws a shawl over her head and steps out on the piazza. Yes sir, there he is! Says Tommy excitedly. That's a bluebird, sure pop! Buttles have gathered in the soggy snow along the roadside and the little stream in the meadow has overflowed its banks. When he uses this, he becomes immediately anxious to get into his rubber boots and go wading. His mother has a doubtful opinion of these wading but it is such a matter of life and death to the boy that she has not the heart to refuse him and contends herself with admonitions not to stay out too long, not to wade in too deep, not to get his clothes wet, etc. The boy begins with one of the small puddles for he has these cautions in his mind. The scope of his enterprise continually enlarges and he presently finds himself trying to determine just how deep a place he can get into without letting the water in over his boot tops. He does not desist from the experiment until he feels a cold trickle down one of his legs from which he concludes that he got in just a little too far that time and he makes a hasty retreat. But he has made his mind easy on the point as to how deep he can go and how turns his attention to poking about with a stick he has picked up. He's quite charmed with the way he can make the water and slush spatter with it. When he gets tired with this and the accumulating wet begins to penetrate his clothing here and there he adjourns to the meadow and sets his stick sailing down the stream there. It fills his heart with delight to see the way it pitches and whirls and he slumps along the brook borders and shouts at it as he keeps it company. Later he returns to the roadway and makes half a dozen dams or more to stop the tiny rills that are coursing down its furrows. He does this with such serious thoughtfulness and with such frequent studious pauses as would well fit the actions of some of the world's great philosophers. No doubt the boy is making discoveries and learning lessons for the farm with varied nature always so close. He's an excellent kindergarten and the farm child is all the time improving its opportunities after some fashion. When our boy goes indoors his mother shows symptoms of alarm over his condition. He thinks he has kept pretty dry but his mother wants to know what an earth he's been doing to get so wet. Ain't been doing nothing, says Tommy. Well, I should say so, remarks his mother. Here, you let me sit you in this chair to kind of dream off by pull off them sobbing mittens. She has to wring the mittens out to the sink before she hangs them on the line back of the stove. Next she pulls off the boy's boots and stands him up while she takes off his overcoat and lastly pushes him chair and all up by the fire where he can put his feet on the stove half. Tommy did not see the necessity for all this fuss. He felt dry enough and all right. Yet as long as his mother does not get disturbed by the sizing point, he finds a good deal of comfort in having her attend to him in this way. It was on one of these still sunshiny March days that it occurred to the oldest boy of the household that it was about time for the sap to begin to run. He does not waste much time in making tracks for the shop where he hunts up some old spouts and an auger. He will tap two or three of the trees near the house anyway. All the smaller children are on hand to watch and advise him and to fetch pans from the house and prop them up under the spouts. They watch eagerly for the appearance of the first drops and when they cite them each tells the rest that there they are and it does run and they want their older brother to stop his boring at the next tree and come and look. But William feels that he is too old to show enthusiasm about such things and he simply tells him that he guesses that he's seen sap for now. The children take turns applying their mouths to the end of the spout number one to catch the first drops that trickle down it. In days following there are frequent visitors to these tapped trees with the avowed purpose of seeing how the sap is running but it is to be noticed that at the same time they seem always to find it convenient to take a drink from a pan. In the more hilly regions of New England most of the farms have a sugar orchard on them and the tree tapping that begins about the house is soon transferred to the woods. The boy goes along too, indeed. What work is there about a farm that he does not have a hand in either of his own will or because he has to but the phase I wish now to speak of is that found on the farms that possess no maple orchard. The boy sees that the trees about the house are attended to as a matter of course and he guards the pans and wands of the neighbors boys when he thinks they are making too free with the pans contents. Each morning he goes out with a pail, gathers the sap and sets it boiling in a kettle on the stove. In time comes the final triumph. When some morning the family leaves the molasses pot in the cupboard and they have maple syrup on their griddle cakes. It is not every boy whose enterprise stops with the tapping of the shade trees in front of the house. On many farms there is an occasional maple about the fields and sometimes there are a few in a patch of near woodland. In such a case the boy gathers a lot of elder stalks while it is still winter, cleans out the pith and shapes him into spouts. At the first approach of mild weather he taps the scattered trees and distributes among them every receptacle the house affords that does not leak or whose leaks can be soldered or bees waxed to catch the sap. After that while the season lasts the brothers swing a heavy tin can on a staff between them and make the periodical tours sap collecting. These frequent tramps through mud and snow in all kinds of weather soon become monotonously veerous and the boys usually find one season of this kind of experience enough. With the going of the snow comes a mud spell that lasts fully a month. It takes you forever to drive anywhere with the team. It is drag, drag, drag and slap, slap, slap all the way. Even the home door yard is little better than a bog and the boy can never seem to step out anywhere without coming in loaded with mud. At least so his mother says. She has continually to be warning him to keep out of the sting room and at times seems to be thrown into as much consternation over some of his footprints that she finds in the kitchen floor as was Robinson Crusoe over the discovery of that lone footprint in the sand. Just as soon as she hears the boys shuffle on the piazza and catch a sight of him coming in at the kitchen door she says, There, Willie, don't you come in till you wipe your feet? I have, says Willie. Why, just look at them, his mother responds. I should think you'd got about all the mud there was in the yard on him. I never saw such sticky old stuff, says Willie. Your brooms most wore out already. Well, remarked his mother, What are you getting into the mud for all over that way every time you step out? Pa's laid down boats all around the yard to walk on. Why don't you go on them? They ain't laid where I want to go, replies Willie. Anyway, is his mother's final remark. I can't have my kitchen floor must up by you tracking in every five minutes but the really severe experiences in this line come when the barnyard is cleaned out. For several days the boy's shoes are a sight and his journeyings are accompanied with such an order that his mother warns him off entirely from her domains. He's not allowed to walk in and get that piece of pie for his lunch but has it handed out to him through the narrowly opened kitchen door. When mealtime comes he has to leave his shoes and overalls in the wood shed and comes into the house in his stocking feet. Even then his mother makes derogatory remarks though he tells her he can't smell anything. It is astonishing how quickly after the snow goes the green will clothe the fields and how with bursting buds and the first blossoms all nature seems teeming with life again. I think the sentiment of the boy is touched by this season more than by any other. The unfolding of all this new life is full of mysterious charm. It is a delight to tread the velvety turf to find the first flowers to catch the oft-repeated sweetness of a Phoebe song or the more forceful trilling of a robin at sundown. It is at nightfall that spring appeals to the boy most strongly. He can still feel the heat of the sun when it lingers at the horizon and in the gentle warmth of its rays enjoys a run about the yard and claps at the little clouds of midges that are sporting in the air. As soon as the sun disappears there is a gathering of cool evening damps and from the swampy hollows come many strange pipings and crookings. The boy wonders vaguely about all the creatures that make these noises and imitates their voices from the home lawn. When the dust begins to deepen into darkness he is glad to get into the light and warmth of the kitchen. To tell the truth our boy is rather afraid of the dark. Just what he fears is but dimly defined though bears, thieves and Indians the fearsome shades that people the night glooms. It does not take much of a noise when he is out alone in the dark to set his heart thumping and his imagination pictures dreadful possibilities in the shapes and movements that greet his eyesight. This fear is not confined to out-of-doors. He has a notion that there may be a lurking savage in the pantry or the cellar or the dusky corners of the hallways or worst of all under his bed. Those fears are most vivid after he has been reading some tale of desperate adventure or of mystery, dark doings and evil characters. Very good books and papers often haven't them be elements that produce these scary effects. These are the sources of his timidity for dime novel trash although not altogether absent is not common in the country. The boy does not usually acquire much of a sphere from the talk of his fellows and his parents certainly do not It is undoubtedly his reading mainly. He rarely feels fear if he has company or if he is where there is light or after he gets into bed that is unless there are noises. What makes these noises you hear sometimes in the night? You certainly don't hear such noises in the daytime. The boy does not mind rats, he knows them. They can race through the walls and grit their teeth on the plastering and throw all those bricks and things that are down inside there that they want to. But it's these creakings and crackings and softer noises that you can't tell what they are that are the trouble. The very best you can do is pull the covers up over your head and shiver into sleep again. But if the boy has frights they are intermittent for the most part and soon forgotten. With the thawing of the snow on the hills and the early rains comes each spring a time of flood on all the brooks that no one appreciates more than the boy who is so fortunate as to have a home on their banks. Water in whatever shape possesses a fascination for the boy if we accept that for washing purposes. It does not matter whether it is a dirty puddle or a sparkling brook or a spurting jet at the highway watering trough, he wants to paddle and splash in everyone. He even sees a touch of the beautiful and sublime in water in some of its effects. There is a charm to him in the plastic pond that mirrors every object along its banks or on brisker days in the choppy waves that break the surface and curl up on the muddy shore. He likes to follow the course of a brook and takes pleasure in noting the clearness of its waters and in watching its crystal leaps. When spring changes the quiet streams into muddy torrents and they become forming and wild and unfamiliar the boy finds the sight impressive and exhilarating. It is the river that the floods have most meaning. The water sets back in all the hollows and broadens into wide lakes on the meadows and covers portions of the main road. The boy cuts a notch in a stick and sets his mark at the water's edge that he may keep posted as to how fast the river is rising. He gets out the spike pole and fishes out the floodwood that floats within reach. If he is old enough to manage a boat he rows out into the stream and hitches a large stick that is sailing along on the swift current. For this purpose, if he is alone he has an iron hook fastened at the back end of the boat that he pounds into the log. It is hard, jerky work towing a log to shore and he does not always succeed in landing his capture. Sometimes the hook will keep pulling out sometimes the thing he hitches onto is too bulky or clumsy and after a long hard pull, panting and exhausted he finds himself getting so far downstream that he reluctantly knocks out the hook, rows and shore and creeps in the eddies along the bank back to his starting place. There is just one trouble about this catching floodwood. It increases the wood pile materially and makes a lot of work, sawing and chopping that the boy has little fancy for. In early spring there is sometimes a long continued spell of dry weather. In the woods the leaves are still bare and the sunlight has free access to the leaf carpeted earth. At such a time, if a fire gets started among the shriveled and tinder like leaves it is no easy task to put it out. Whole neighbourhoods turn out to fight it and several days and nights may pass before it is under control. The boy is among the first on the spot with his hoe and immediately begins a vigorous scratching to clear a path in the leaves that the fire will not burn across. The company scatters and sometimes the boy finds himself alone. Clothes in front extending away in both directions is the ragged fire line leaping and crackling. The woods are still, the sun shines bright and there is a sense of mystery and danger in the presence of those sullen, devouring flames. Now comes a puff of wind that causes the fire to make a sudden dash forward and shrouds the boy with smoke. He runs back to a point of safety and listens to the far-off shouts of the men. The fire is across the path he hold and he picks up a piece of birch to eat while he clambers up the hill to find company. When night comes the boy wanders off home to do his work and eat supper. If he is allowed he is out again with his hoe in the evening. The scene is full of a wild charm. From the somberness of the unburned tracks you look into the hot wavering line of dazzling flames and on into regions where linger many sparkling embers which the fire has not yet burned out and now and then there is a pile of wood that is a great mass of glowing coals and again the high stump of some dead tree that burns like a torch in the blackness. The boy thinks the men do more talking and advising than work. He does not accomplish much himself. The men keep together and he hangs about the dark half-lighted groups, listens to the dead, and with the others does some desultory scratching to keep the fire from gaining new ground at the point they are guarding. By and by there comes a man hallowing his way through the woods to them who has brought a milk can full of coffee. Every man and boy takes a drink and they all crack jokes and exchange opinions with the bearer till he starts off to find the next group. Some of the men stay on guard all night but the boy and his father about darting up the flames behind them and take a gloomy wood road that leads toward home. There has been nothing very alarming in the day's adventures but the boy never forgets the experience. Fire is fascinating to the boy in any form. He burned his fingers at the stove damper when he was a baby. He likes to look at the glow of a lamp and a candle with its soft flicker and halo is especially pleasing. Then those new matches his folks have got that go off with a snap and burst at once into a sudden place. He has never seen anything like them. They remind him of the delights of 4th of July. The chief event of the spring is a bonfire in the garden. There is an accumulation of dead vines and old pea brush and apple tree trimmings that often make a large heap. The fire is enjoyable at whatever time it comes but it is at its best if they touch it off in the evening. The whole family comes out to see it then and Frank fixes up a seat for his mother and the baby out of a board and some blocks and invites some of the neighbors boys to be on hand. He puts an armful of leaves under a corner of the pile and sets it going with some of those parlor matches. The neighbors boys stand around and tell him how and even offer to do it themselves. When the blaze fairly starts and begins to trickle up through the twigs above it the children jump for joy and clap their hands and run to get hand fulls of leaves and scattered rubbish to throw on. Frank pokes the pile this way and that with a switch fork and the neighbors boys like the ends of long sticks and wave them about in the air. Even the baby coos with delight. The father has a rake and does most of the work that is really necessary while the boys furnish all the action and noise needful to make the occasion a success. When the blaze gets highest and the heat penetrates far back the company becomes quiet and they stand about exchanging occasional words and simply watching the flames lick up the brush and flash upward and disappear amid the smoke and sparks that rise high toward the dark deeps of the sky. The frolic is resumed when the pile of brush begins to fall inward and presently mother says she and the baby and the smallest children must go in. The latter protest but they have to go and not long after the embers of the fire are all raked together and Frank and the neighbors boys fool around a little longer and get about a half dozen final warming ups and then tramp off homeward in whistling happiness. On the day following the garden is plowed and harrowed then the boy has to help scratch it over and even it off with a rake and is kept on the jump all the time getting out seeds and planters and tools that never seem to be in the right place at the right time. Meanwhile he induces his father to let him have a corner of the garden for his own and gets his advice as to what he had best put in it to make his fortune. He scratches over the plot about twice as fine as the rest of the garden and won't let any of the old hens that are hanging around looking for worms come near it. He has concluded that peas are the things to bring in money but he is tempted to try three or four hills of potatoes between the rows after he has the peas in. He has saved space for a hill of watermelons and just to fill up the blanks which seem rather large with nothing yet up he puts in as a matter of experiment a number of other seeds here and there of one sort and another. He puts these in from time to time along when it comes handy and a thought occurs to him. He was somewhat astonished at the way things came up. Indeed he thought they would never get done coming up and they were pretty well mixed up in their arrangement. He got so discouraged over the things that kept sprouting in one corner that he hold the whole thing up on that spot and transplanted a few cabbages on it. He used to get his mother to come out and look at his garden patch and he enjoyed telling her his plans but he left that off for a while when the things became so erratic and waited till he could thin them out and bring their proceedings within his comprehension. It isn't spring more than any other season that the boys ideas bud with new enterprises. He forgets most of them by the time he has them fairly started and none of them are apt to have any pecuniary value but that never damns his enthusiasm and rushing into new ones. The hunting fever is apt to take him pretty soon after the snow goes and he makes a bow and whittles out some arrows and turns Indian. He may even visit the resorts of the hens and collect enough feathers to make a circlet to wear around his head. Then he goes off and hunts bears and things and scalps the neighbors boys. Sometimes instead of being an Indian he gets his father to saw out a wooden gun and turns pioneer then savages and wild animals both have to catch it. He will skulk around in the most approved fashion and say bang for his gun every time he fires and he will like enough kill half a hundred Indians and a dozen easily bears in one forenoon. He is fearless as you please until night comes. Not all the boys hunting is so mild as to stop at the killing off of bears and Indians. Sometimes he shoots his arrows at real life things or he has a rubber sling or he practices throwing stones and does not resist the temptation to make the birds and squirrels and possibly the cats and the chickens has marks. It is true that he rarely hits any of them and the sensitive boy if he seriously hurts one of the creatures fired at has a twinge of remorse but there are those who will only glory in the straightness of their aim. There is something of the savage still in their nature and they feel a sense of prowess and power and bringing down that which in spite of its life and movement did not escape them. It is to them a much grander and more enjoyable thing than to hit a lifeless the boys at any rate many of them are at times in a thoughtless way downright cruel. See how they will bang about the old horse upon occasion. They have no compunctions about drowning a cat or ringing the neck of a chicken and will run half a mile to be present at a hog killing. They have barely a grain of sympathy for the worm they impale on their fish hooks. They will kill the grasshopper who will not give them molasses. They crush the butterflies wings in catching it with their straw hats and they pull off insect limbs to see them wriggle or to find out how the insect will get along without them. I will not extend the horrible list and I am not sure that most boys would be guiltless of the majority of these charges. However, they are much too apt to play the part of the destroyers. This spirit is shown in the way the boy will whip off the heads of flowers along his path if he has a stick in his hand the manner in which he gathers them when gathering happens to be his purpose. He never thinks of their life or of their beauty where they stand or of the future. He picks them all snaps off the heads, pulls them up by the roots, any way to get the whole thing in the shortest possible time. If the boy was as thorough as he is ruthless, you could never find more flowers of the same sort on that spot. This does not argue a total disregard for the flowers but it is a pity to love a thing to destruction. The first token of spring in the flower line that the boy brings into the house is probably a sprig of pussy-villa. The fuzzy catkins are to his mind very odd and interesting and pretty. The ground is still snow-covered and they have started with the first real thaw. Before the pastures get their first green, the boy goes off to find the new Arbitus buds that smell sweetest of all the flowers he knows, unless it may be a bunny-suckle that comes later. Already by the brook are the queer skunk cabbage blossoms and the boy sometimes pulls one to pieces and even sniffs the order just to learn how bad it really is. He may find a stout short-stem dandelion that's early open in some warm grassy hollow and a few days later the anemones dainty cups are out and full and trembling on their slender stems with every breath of air. In pasture balls and along the roads are violets mostly blue but in places there are yellow and white ones ready to delight their finder. The higher and drier slopes of the pastures are in spots sometimes almost blue with a coarse bird-footed violets while lower down the ground is as white with the multitudes of innocence as if there had been a light snowfall. Along the roadways and fences the wild cherry trees are clouded full of white petals and in the woods are white where the dogwoods unfurl their blossoms. By the end of May the meadows are like a night sky full of stars so thick are the dandelions and on the rocks of the hillside the Columbines sway full of their oddly shaped pendulous bells. In some damp woodpath the boy is filled with rejoicing by the finding of one of the rare Lady Slippers where he has been gathering wake robin. The only other spring flower I will mention as of special day is the jack in the pulpit and that hardly seems a flower to him it is so queer. Spring has three days with an individuality that makes him stand out among the rest. The first of April is April Fool's Day. The only idea the boy has about it that the more things he can make the rest of the world think on that day are not so the better. It has to be acknowledged that most of the tricks are not very clever or commendable and the boy himself feels that he is sometimes getting uncomfortably close to lying. The common form of fooling is to get a person to look at something that is not inside see that crow out there says the boy to his father where asks his father when he looks out. April Fool's shouts the boy and he is pleased with a slick way he fooled his pa for about half an hour when he discovers that he has been walking around for he doesn't know how long with a slip of paper on his that his sister pinned there and what he reads on it when he gets it off is April Fool. He does not feel so happy then but he saves the paper to pin on someone else. All day his brain is full of schemes to get people looking at the imaginary objects he calls their attention to and at the same time he is full of suspicions himself and you have to be very sharp and sudden to fool him. When night comes he rejoices in the fact that he has got one or two moves off on every member of the family and there is no knowing what a nuisance he has made of himself among the rest of his friends. It gives him a grand good appetite and he feels inclined to be quite conversational. His remarks however assume a milder tenor when he bites into a portly donut and finds it made of cotton. He is afraid his mother is trying to fool him. He wouldn't have thought it of her. Soon after this day comes fast day. Schools let out and there is meeting at the church but most folks do not pay much attention to that and it being a holiday they eat rather more than on other days if anything and they joke about it being fast in the sense that it is not slow. Our boy does what work he has to do and then asks the privilege of going off to see some other boy and have some fun. However that is the thing that happens in all sorts of days. He is always ready with that request when he has leisure and makes it often times too when he has no leisure in anyone's opinion but his own. The 30th of May is decoration day and a company of soldiers will come with a band and flags and will decorate the graves of the soldiers in the little cemetery and there will be singing and other exercises and everybody will be there. The boy has his bouquet and he is on the spot promptly and chatting with some of his companions. It may be the quiet of the early morning that is the appointed time there are lines of teams hitched along the roadside and two or three score of waiting people have gathered near the entrance. The occasion has something of the solemnity of a funeral and even the boys lower their voices as they talk. The sound of a drum and fire is heard around the turn of the road. The soldiers under their drooping flag approach and file into the cemetery. A song and address and a prayer follow all very impressive to the boy out there under the skies with the wide landscape about. Finally he lays his flowers with the others on the graves. The soldiers form in line the five pipes once more the drum beats and off they go down the road. Then the people begin a more cheerful visiting and there is a cramping of wheels as the teams turn to go homeward. The boy with his friends pokes about among some of the old stones and then lingers along in the rear of the scattered groups that are taking the road that leads to the village. End of Part 2 Spring Read for you by Chiquito Crasto Birmingham, Alabama Part 3 of The Farmer's Boy by Clifton Johnson This LibriVox recording is in the public domain. Read for you by Chiquito Crasto Part 3 Summer The boy feels that summer has really come about the time he gets a new straw hat and begins to go barefoot. When he first gets on the earth without shoes and stockings he is as frisky as are the cows when after the winter sojourn in the barn they are let out to go to pasture for the first time. The boy remembers very well how he nearly ran his legs off on that occasion for the cows wanted to career all through the neighborhood and they kicked and capered and ran and hoisted their tails in the air and were as bad as a circus broke loose. The boy would have gone barefoot some weeks before only he could not get his mother to understand how warm the earth really was. It is cooler now than he thought but he gets into a glow running and in a few days the exposure toughens his feet so that he can stand almost anything, anything but shoes and stockings. He hates to put those uncomfortable things on and when he does is glad to kick them off at the earliest opportunity. Even the frosts of autumn do not at once bring the shoes out. He will drive the cows up the whitened lane and slip shivering along in the tracks brushed half clear of the frost by the herd certain that he will be entirely comfortable a little later when the sun gets well up but the joy of bare feet is not altogether complete even in summer. About half the time the boy goes with a limp he has hurt his toe cut his heel or met with some like mishap there is something always lying around for him to step on and in the late summer certain wicked birds ripen in the meadow that have hooks to their prickles that hurt enough going in but are oh so much worse pulling out the boy never likes to walk on newly moaned land on account of the stiff grass stubs that cover it yet he can manage pretty well by sliding his feet along and making the stubble lie flat when he steps on it however the gains the bare feet certainly much more than offset the losses to his mind for he can tramp and wade almost everywhere and in all kinds of weather with no fear of tearing his stockings muddying his shoes or getting his feet wet he appreciates this going barefoot most perhaps after a rainstorm you have no idea unless you have been a boy yourself what fun it is to slide and spatter through the pools and puddles of the roadway there is the boy's for instance she fails to have the mildest kind of appreciation of it she has even less if that is possible when the boy comes into her after he has astonished himself by a sudden slip that seats him in the middle of one of these puddles when the air after a storm is very still the boy is sometimes impressed by the apparent depth of these shallow pools they seem to go down miles and miles and he can see the clouds and sky reflected in their clear deeps he's half inclined to keep away from their edges lest he should fall over and go down and down till he was drowned among those far off cloud reflections another roadway sentiment the boy sometimes entertains is connected with the ridges of dirt thrown up by the wagon wheels their shadows make pictures to him as of a great line of jagged rocks like the wild coast of Norway in his geography he feels like an explorer as he follows the ever changing cragginess of their outlines I mentioned that the boy had a new straw hat with the beginning of summer you would not think it two days afterward it had by then lost its store manner and had taken to itself an individual shape all its own it did not take long for the ribbon to begin to fly loose of the breezes and then the cold took a bite out of the edge and a general dissolution set in the boy used it to chase grasshoppers and butterflies with and one day he brought it home half berries he had picked in a field on another occasion he utilized it to catch polywags in when he was waiting and he hastened its ruin by using it as a ball on summer evenings to throw it in the air he thought one night he had put it past all usefulness when not thinking where he had placed it he went and sat down in the chair where it was you would not have known it for a hat when he picked it up though he straightened it out after a fashion and concluded it would serve a while longer anyway but things presently got to that desperate pass where the brim was gone and there was a bristly hole in the top and the folks saw the hat could not possibly last the summer through and the next time his father went to town he bought the boy a new one of course he told him to be more careful with this than with the old one when he gave it to him the summer was not far advanced when the boy became anxious as to whether the water had warmed up enough in the water to allowable to go in swimming as for the little rivers among the hills they never did get warmed up and in the hottest spells of midsummer it made the boys teeth chatter to jump into their cold pools but there was a glowing reaction after the plunge and if he did not stay in too long he came out quite enlivened by his bath the bathing places on those woodland streams are often quite picturesque it may be a spot where the stream widens into a little pond hemmed in the colds of green foliage whose branches and places droop far out over the water it may be in a rocky gorge strewn with boulders where the stream fills the air with a continual roar and murmur as it dashes down the rapids and plunges from pool to pool on the large rivers of the valleys the swimming places have usually muddy shores and a willow screen bank and there are logs to float on or an old boat to push about in favorable weather the boys go in swimming every evening and they make the air resound for half a mile about with their shouts and splashing june comes in with lots of work in the planting line the boy has to drop fertilizer and drop potatoes some days from morning till night by which time he is ready to drop himself in corn planting he has his own bag of tarred corn and his hoe and takes the row next to his father's for a spell he may keep up with the rest but as the day advances he lags behind and his father plants a few hills occasionally on the boy's row to encourage him one of the things a boy soon becomes an adept at is leaning on his hoe he naturally does this most when he is alone in the field and not liable to sudden interruptions in his meditations at such times he gets lonesome and has that tired feeling and gets to wondering why the dinner horn doesn't blow you would not think a hoe an easy thing to lean on but the boy will stand on one leg with the hoe handle hooked under his shoulder for any length of time the corn is no sooner in the ground then the crows begin to happen around to investigate they will pull it even after it gets an inch or two high and snap off the kernel at the roots and it seems sometimes as if they rather like the flavor of the tar put on to destroy their appetite the boy's indignation waxes high and he wishes he had a gun or a pistol or something to fix those old crows his mother does not like firearms she is afraid he will shoot himself but she gives him some old clothes and he goes off to the shop to tack a scarecrow together and stuff him with hay when his father appears and pretends to be scared by the scarecrow's terrible figure the boy is quite elated after supper he and his mother and the smaller children go out in the field and set the man up and the boy shakes hands with him and holds a little conversation with him his small brothers and sisters are sure the girls won't dast to come around there any more and they are kind of scared of the old scarecrow themselves the days wax hotter and hotter as the season advances and the boy presently gets down to the simplest elements in the clothing line indeed if his folks do not insist on something more elaborate he goes about entirely content in a shirt and a pair of overalls his hair is apt to grow rather long between the cuttings his mother gives it and about this time he looks up an uncle who is an adept in the hair cutting line and gets a tight clip that leaves him as bald as his most ancient ancestor he feels delightfully cool anyway and looks don't count much with him at that age as soon as the first plowing was done in the spring the onions were showed their little green needles soon prickled up through the ground and now they have the company of a multitude of weeds and must be hod and weeded out one thing the boy never quite gets to understand is the curious facts that weeds at first start will grow twice as fast as any useful crop he wishes weeds had some value all you'd have to do would be to let them grow they take care of themselves in the case of the onions the hoeing out part is not very bad but when you get down on your hands and knees to scratch the weeds out of the rows with your fingers your trouble begins the boy says his back aches his father comforts him by telling him that he guesses not that he's too young to have the back ache he waits till he's 50 or 60 and his joints get stiff and he has the rheumatism then he'll have something to talk about but the boy knows very well that his back does ache and the son is as hot again as it was when he was standing up and his head feels as if it were going to drop off he gets up once in a while to stretch and to see if there are any signs of his mother's wanting him at the house or hens around that ought to be chased off or anything else going on that will give him a chance for a change his work again presently and tries various changes from plain stoop such as one knee down and the other raised to support his chest or a sit down in the row and an attempt to weed backward when left to himself he takes long rests at the end of the rows lying in the grass on his back under the shadow of an apple tree or he gets thirsty and goes in the house for a drink he's afflicted with thirst a great deal when he's weeding onions and gets cook hungry remarkably often too his most agreeable respite while weeding occurs when he discovers that the neighbors boy has come out and is at work just over the fence he throws a lump of dirt at him to attract his attention and then they exchange hellos they soon come together and lean on the fence and compare gardens and likely enough get to boasting and on the borders of a quarrel before they are through our boy goes back to work in time and his aches are not so severe afterward at least so long as he has the neighbors boy over the fence to call at when the boy's father goes away from home to be gone all day he's apt to set the boy astent you put into it now he says and hold those 18 rows of corn and then you can play the rest of the day the boys inclined to be dubious when he contemplates his task it doesn't look to him as if he could get it done in the whole day but he makes a start and concludes it is not so bad after all he keeps at work with considerable perseverance and only stops to sit on the fence for a little while at the end of every other row and wants to go up the lane to pick a few raspberries that have turned almost black as a rose dwindle he becomes increasingly exuberant and whistles all through the last one and when that is done and he puts his hoe over his shoulder and marches home he has not a care in the world he made up his mind early in the day that he would go fishing when he was free and now he digs some worms back of the shop gets out his pole and hunts up his best friend is watering tobacco he can't go just then but if Tommy will pitch in and help him for about 15 minutes he'll have that job done and will be with him the boys make the water fly and it is not long before they and their poles and their thin bait box are at the riverside the water just dimples in the light breeze the warm afternoon sunlight shines in the boys faces and glitters on the ripples they conclude after a little while that it is not a good afternoon for fishing and think wading will prove more profitable as a result they get their pants wet and their jackets splatter though where on earth all that water came from they can't make out they thought they were careful they are afraid their mothers will make some unpleasant remarks when they get home it seems best they should roll down their trousers and give them a chance to dry a little before they have to leave meanwhile they do not suffer for lack of amusement for they find a lot of rubbish to throw into the water and some flat stones to skip some lucky bugs to catch and lastly charlie thompson's spotted dog shows himself on the bank and they entice him down to the shore and take to wading again and have great fun and get wetter than ever as they walk home Tommy said let's go fishing again some day and Sammy agreed without any hesitation they caught not even a shinier this time but on some occasions they brought home a perch or two and a bull head and a sucker strung on a will or twig those on which they were freers to go fishing and on such days the fish were supposed to buy best the boy seemed perfectly willing to don an old coat and an old felt hat and spend a whole drizzling morning at almost any time slopping along the muddy margin of the river no one could accuse him of being over fastidious at some time in his career the boy was pretty sure to bring home a live fish in his tin lunch pail and turn him loose in the water tub at the barn and he might catch a dozen or so minnows in a pool left landlocked by a fall of the water and put those in he would see them chasing around in there and the old big fish lurking very solemn in the darkest depths and he fed them bits of bread and worms and planned for them a very happy and comfortable life till they should be grown up and he was ready to eat them but they disappeared in time and there was not one left the boy had an idea they must have eaten each other and then the cow swallowed the last one that what was it in the early summer strawberries are ripe they are the first berries to come that amount to anything you can pick a few winter green and part rich berries in the hill size in spring but those hardly count the boy always knows spots in the farm where the strawberries grow wild and when some early morning he goes up with the cows and is laid to breakfast it proves he has been tramping in the pasture after berries he has pushed out among the due laden tangles of the grass until he is as wet as if he had been in the river but he is in a glowing triumph on his return over the red clusters he pulls from his hat to display to the family probably some farmer in the neighborhood raises strawberries for market and pays two cents a quart for picking if so the boy cannot rest easy till his folks agree to let him improve his chances to gain pocket money which is a thing he never fails to be short of he will get up at three o'clock in the morning and carries breakfast with him in order to be on hand with the rest of the children on the field at daybreak his eagerness cools off in a few days and it is only with the greatest difficulty that the employer can get his youthful help to stick to the work through the season they have eaten the berries till they are sick of them they are tired of stooping and they have earned so much that their longings for wealth are satisfied they are rapt to get to squabbling about rows while picking and to enliven the work on dull days by sassing one another the proper position for picking is a stooping posture but when the boy comes home you can see by the spotted pattern on the knees and seat of his trousers that he has made some sacrifices to comfort the proprietor of the berry fields and all concerned are glad when they get to the end of the season when the boy got up those early June mornings he was in time to hear their air full of bird songs as it would be at no other time through the day what made the birds so madly happy as soon as the east caught the first tints of the coming sun seemed fairly alive with the songsters and every bird was doing his best to outdo the rest most boys have not a very wide acquaintance with the birds but there are certain ones that never fail to interest them the boy's favorite is pretty sure to be the bobble link he's such a happy fellow he reels through the air in such delight over his singing and the sunny weather how his song gurgles and glitters how he swells out his throat how prettily he balances and sways his tall meadow flower he has a beautiful coat of black and white and the boy wonders at the rusty feathers of his mate which looks like an entirely different bird as the season advances bobble link changes and not for the better his handsome coat gets dingy and he loses his former gaiety he has forgotten almost altogether the notes of his earliest song of tumbling happiness and croaks harshly as he stuffs himself in the seeds with which the fields now team has spoiled his character just as if he had been human before summer is done the bobble links gather in companies and wheel about the fields in little clouds preparatory to migrating sometimes the whole flock flies into some big tree and from amid the foliage comes scores of tinkling notes as of many tiny bells jingling the boy sees no more of the bobble links till they return in the spring to once more pour forth their overflowing joy on the blossom scented air of the meadows the birds that the boy is familiar with is the lark a coarse large bird with two or three white feathers in its tail but the lark is too sober to interest him much then there is the cat bird of sleek form and stately plummage flitting and mewing among the shadows of the apple tree boughs the brisk robin who always has a scared look and therefore is out of character as a robber he knows very well robin builds a rough nest of straws and mud in the crotches of the fruit trees and he has a habit of crying in sharp notes at sundown as if he were afraid sorrow was coming to him in some shape the robin has a caroling song too but that the boy is not so sure of separating from the music of the other birds he always knows the woodpeckers by their long bills and the way they trot up and down the tree trunks bottom side up or anyhow he knows the bluebird by its color and the Phoebe by its song the Orioles are not numerous enough for him to have acquaintance with but he is familiar with the dainty nest they swing far out on the tips of the branches of the big shade trees he sees numbers of little birds when the cherries ripen and the peepods fill out that are as bright as glints of golden sunlight they vary in their tinting in size but he calls them all yellow birds and has a poor opinion of them for he rarely sees them except when they are stealing along the water coasters he now and then glimpses a heavy headed kingfisher sitting in solemn watchfulness on a limb or making a startling headlong plunge into a pool along shore the sandpipers run about in a nervous way on their thin legs always deetering and complaining and taking fright and flitting away like a shot at the least sound on the borders of the ponds the boy sometimes comes upon a crane or a blue heron meditating on one leg up to his knee in water off he goes in awkward flight trailing his long legs behind him turns to the wild ducks alight in the fall and spring on their journeys south and north there may be as many as 20 of the compact glossy-backed creatures in a single flock but a much smaller number is more common the swallows on summer days are to be found skimming over the waters of the streams and ponds and they may flying dips and twitter and rise and fall and twist and turn and seem very happy they have holes in a high bank in the vicinity and if the boy wants to get a collection of bird eggs he arms himself with a trowel someday and climbs the steep dirt bank to dig them out the holes go in about an arm's length and at the end is a rude little nest and some white eggs with such tender shells that the boy breaks many more than he succeeds in carrying away he stores such eggs as he gathers from time to time in small wooden or pasteboard boxes with cotton in the bottoms until too many of them get broken when he throws the whole thing away his interest has been destructive and temporary and he would much better have studied in a different fashion or turned his talents to something else several other birds are still to be mentioned that get his attention there are the hummingbirds that are so small and that buzz out among the blossoms and prick them with their long bills and poise so still on their misty wings and have hues of rainbow in their feathers and flash out of sight across the yard when they see you there are the barn and chimney swallows that you notice most at twilight darting in tangled flights in upper air or skimming low over the fields in twittering alertness how they worry the old cat as she crouches in the hay field again and again they almost touch her head in their circling but they are so swift and changeful that the cat has no chance of catching them then there is the king bird the boy very much admires he's a vigorous well-looking fellow with admirable antipathy for tyrants and bullies size makes no difference with him he puts the crow to ungainly flight he follows the hawk and you can see him high in the air darting down at the great birds back again and again and he does not even fear the eagle in corn planting time the whip will makes the evening air ring with his lonely calls and the boy has sometimes seen his dusky form standing lengthwise in a fence rail just as he was about to flip far across the fields and renew more distant by his whistling cry the most distressing bird of all is a little screech owl his tremulous and long drawn wail suggests that someone human is out there in the orchard crying out in his last feeble agonies to put it mildly the boy is scared when he hears the screech owl the great and only holiday of the summer is 4th of july the boy very likely does not know or especially care what the philosophic meaning of the day is as he understands it the occasion is one whose first requirement is a lots of noise to furnish this in plenty he is willing to begin the day by getting up at midnight to parade the village streets with the rest of the boys and toot horns and set off firecrackers and liven up the sleepy occupants of the houses by making particular efforts before each dwelling we have a care in their operations to be on guard that they may listen to a safe distance if anyone rushes out to lecture or chastise them but if all continues quiet with indoors they will hoot and howl about for some time and even blow up the mailbox with a cannon cracker or commit other mild depredations to add to the glory of the occasion when some particularly brilliant brain conceives the idea of getting all the boys to take hold of an old mowing machine and gallop it to the dark streets in full clutter it may be supposed that the final touch to American independence and liberty it was not all the boys that went roaming around thus and it was the older and rougher ones who were the leaders the smaller boys did not enter very heartily into all of the fun though they dared not openly hang back and when the stars paled in the first gray approach of dawn began to lighten the east the little fellows felt very sleepy and lonely in spite of the company and noise they were glad enough when soon after the band broke up and they could steal home and go to bed the day itself was enliven by much popping of firecrackers and torpedoes in farm door yards by a village picnic in the afternoon and by a grand setting off in the evening of pin wheels roman candles a nigger chaser and a rocket after the rocket had gone up into the sky with its wild whir and its showering of sparks and had toppled and burst and burned out into blackness the day was ended and the boy retired with the happiness that comes from labor done well performed the work of all others that fills the summer months is haying in the hill towns the land is stony and steep and much of it is cut over with sides but the majority of new england farmers do most of their grass cutting with mowing machines a boy will hardly do much of the actual mowing in either case until he is in his teens but long before that he's called on to turn the grindstone an operation that proceeds the mowing of each fresh field he gets pretty sick of before the summer is through he likes to follow after the mowing machine there is something and livening in its clatter and he enjoys seeing the grass tumble backward as the darting knives strike their stocks he does not care so much about following his father when he mows with a scythe for then he's expected to carry a fork and spread the swath his father piles up behind him on the little farms machines are lacking to a degree and the boys have to do much of the mowing and raking by hand finally they have to borrow a horse to get it in the best provided farmer usually does some borrowing and there are those who are running all the time that is they keep the boy running boys are made for running the boy does not like this job very well for the lender is too often doubtful in this manner if not in his words on still summer days the hay field is apt to be a very hot place the hay itself has a great glisten and the low lying air heat it is all very well if you can ride on the tether or rake but it makes the perspiration start if you have to do any work by hand you do not have to be much of a boy to be called on by your father to rake up the scattering back of the load and you find you have to be on the jump all the time to keep up if you can rake you are large enough to be on the load and tread the hay into place as it is thrown up it is not till you are pretty well grown that you have the strength to do the pitching on either the boy does in the field in the barn his place is up under the roof moving away the place is dusky and the dust flies and a cricket or some uncomfortable many legged creature crawls down your back it is hot and stifling and the hay comes up about twice as fast as you want it before the load is quarter off you begin to listen for the welcome scratch on your father's fork on the wagon rack that signals the inearing of the bottom of the load even then you have to creep all around under the eaves to tread the hay more solidly you are glad enough when you can crawl down the ladder and go into the house and give your head a soak under the pump and get a drink of water there's nothing tastes much better than water when you are dry that way unless it is sweetened water that you take in a jug right down to the hay field with you I do not wish to give the impression that haying is made up too much of sweat and toil and that the boy finds it altogether a season of trial and tribulation it is not at all bad on cool days and some boys like the jumping about on load and mow there is fun in the jolting rattling ride in the springless wagon to the hay field and when the hay cocks in the orchard are rolled up for the night the boys have great sport turning somersaults over them then there are exhilarating occasions when the sky blackens and from the distant horizon comes the flashing and muttering of an approaching thunderstorm everybody does his best then you raise the horses and the hay is rolled up and goes fork full after fork full twinkling up on the load in no time but the storm is likely to come before you have done there is a spattering of great drops that gives warning and a dash of cold wind and everybody teams and all will be seen racing helter skelter to the barns you are in luck if you get there before the whole air is filled with the flying drops it is a pleasurable excitement and you feel very comfortable in spite of your wet clothes as you sit on the meal chest talking with the others listening to the rolling thunder and the rain rattling on the roof and splashing into the yard from the eaves spout you look out of the big barn doors into the sheeted rain that veils the fields with its hurrying mists and see its half glooms lit up now and then by the shredded tatters all nature glitters and drips and tinkles the trees and fields have freshness of spring the tip of every leaf and every blade of grass twinkles with a diamond drop of water the boy runs out with a shout to the roadside puddles the chickens leave the shelter of the sheds and rejoice in the number of worms crawling about the hard packed earth of the door yard and all kinds of birds begin singing in jubilee but whatever incidental pleasure there may be in hanging it is generally considered a season of uncommonly hard work and at its end the farm family thinks itself entitled to a picnic and a season of milder labor the picnic idea usually develops into a plan to spend a whole day at some resort of picnickers where you have to pay 25 cents for admission children half price of course there are all sorts of ways that you can spend a good deal more than that at these places but it is mostly the young men who feel called upon to demonstrate their fondness for the girls they have brought with them that patronize the extras the farm family is economical it carries feet for its horses and a big lunch basket packed full for itself and simply goes in for all the things that are free the Johnny and Tommy are allowed to draw on the Amiga supply of pocket money to the extent of 5 cents each for candy there are swings to swing in and tables to eat on in a grove and if it is by a lake or river there are boats to row in and fish to catch only you can't catch them meanwhile the horses are tied conveniently in the woods and spend the day kicking and switching at the flies that happen around toward evening the wagon is backed about and loaded up the horses hitched up to it and everybody piles in and noses are counted and off they go homeward the sun sets the bright skies fade and the stars sparkle out one by one and look down on them as the horses jog along the glooms of the half-wooded unfamiliar roadways some of the children get down under the seats they are soon in a shaking gurgle as the wagon jolts their voices and they shut their eyes and fancy the wagon is going backward oh so swiftly then they open their eyes and there are the tree leaves fluttering overhead and the deep night sky above and they see they are going on after all when they near home they all sit up on the seats once more and watch for familiar objects along the road there is the house at last the horses turn into the yard they all are light in a few minutes a lamp is lighted in the kitchen a neighbor has milked the cows there are full pails on the bench in the back room the children are so tired they can hardly keep their eyes open but they must have a slice of bread and butter all around and a piece of pie then tired but happy they bundle off to bed not every excursion of this kind is to a public pleasure resort sometimes the family goes after huckleberries or blackberries or relatives who live in a neighboring town or to see a circus parade at a county seat the family vehicle has apt to be the high two-seated spring wagon it is not particularly handsome to look at but I fancy it holds more happiness than the gilded cars with their gaudy occupants that they see pass in the parade the strawberries are the first heralds of a summer full of good things to eat the boy begins sampling each in turn as soon as they show signs of ripening and on farms where children are numerous and fruits are not very few things ever get ripe you would not think to look at him that a small boy could eat as much as he can he will be chewing on something all the morning and have just as good an appetite for dinner as ever in the afternoon he will eat 17 green apples and be on hand for supper as lively as a cricket still there are times when he repents his eating in discretion in sackcloth and ashes there is a point in the green apple line beyond which even the small boy does not safely go the twisting pains get hold of his stomach and he has to go to his mother and get her to do something to keep him in the land of the living he repents of all his misdeeds while the pain is on him just as he would in a thunderstorm in the night that waked and scared him and he says his prayers and hopes after all if these are his last days he has not been so bad but that he will go to the good place when he gets better however he forgets these vows and does much more things to repent but that is not peculiarly a boy straight grown up people do that end of part 3 summer read for you by Chiquito Crasto Birmingham, Alabama