140 



THE GUIDE TO NATURE 



day. The sun goes down ; the evening 

 meal is served ; it is like the vesper 

 hour of Sunday. The day has been an 

 epitome of the year. Then comes the 

 Indian summer of the day ; the men 

 sit by the wall under the apple tree ; 

 they slowly puff at their pipes ; they 

 speak of haying times in the long ago 



shadows of the night. The boy sits up 

 and peers into the darkness with eager, 

 hopeful eyes ; the boastful veterans of 

 the scythe, the rake and the pitchfork, 

 are sleeping the sleep that comes only 

 after a well-fought battle ; the boy 

 wonders why the whip-poor-will calls 

 at night, and wonders if it is really 



COMPARISONS. 



The Man in the Center: "He's always a boastin' o' what he did when he was a boy."' 



The Man at the Right: ''Gol darn it! If that hand wan't so lame I could beat yer out now any day and 

 not half try." 



The Man on the Ground: "Them two fellers is alwuz tellin' yarns o' what they uster do." 



■when, as boys, they stirred the 

 swathes. Giants must have lived in 

 those days, for never in later years 

 have swathes looked so big as they 

 looked to the boy that stirred the scat- 

 tered heaps with his pitchfork. 



Uncle Joe tells of the great cham- 

 pion of the hayfield in his day, and 

 Uncle William not to be outdone tries 

 to go him one better in lauding his 

 favorite hero. Uncle William must 

 have been a great man because his 

 greatness increases every time the ac- 

 count of his strength is told. 



"Say, fellows, what do you say, it 

 ain't a going to rain to-night, to going 

 down in the hayfield and spreading 

 around two or three of those haycocks 

 under the ash tree? 1 ' 



"Come on, we'll do it." And there 

 the stories are continued till one by 

 one they are ended in the deepening 



true, if it is really true, if it is really 

 true, and he does not know really what 

 he is wondering about because he has 

 joined the sleepers. 



It is the end of the day in haying 

 time. The stars sparkle in the indigo 

 sky, the leaves rustle in the night 

 wind, the whip-poor-will continues to 

 sing the "ballad of his grief." 



Footnote : The illustrations were taken at 

 the Town Farm because it is only there that 

 one can find the type of veteran so familiar 

 in the hayfield of fifty years ago. Haying 

 was then an event. It was a cooperative bee 

 to which came all the old and young, chiefly 

 the old. Those that worked at no other time 

 worked in haying time ; nowadays all this is 

 changed. The picturesqueness is absent. A 

 hayfield with hay tedders and loading ma- 

 chines, lacks the interest and the savor of the 

 hayfield as it was fifty years ago. But in the 

 hayfield at the Town Farm in Stamford, one 

 may find the type of man that gathered 

 around every great farm as a hanger-on. A 



