Part 27

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

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

L'ENVOI

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

OCTOBER

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

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

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

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