56 



THE GUIDE TO NATURE 



the house, "Little late. Guess you 

 overslept. We're getting ahead of you. 



There's a fork." 



Now the dooryard was a minor mat- 

 ter. It hardly merited the labor of 

 full grown men in the hours between 

 breakfast and noon. It was a time- 

 honored custom to do that work before 

 breakfast. It was an appetizer for 

 the scythes as well as For the men and 

 the boy. The wet and glistening grass 

 must not only be mown before break- 



for ten mornings — in as many years. 

 And perhaps memory has played the 

 trick of massing together all the ten 

 and multiplying them tenfold. At any 

 rate, a hay day that did not begin with 

 an early call, if the sunshine did not 

 make a little bright triangle in the 

 corner of the attic bedroom, if the 

 music were not mingled with jokes 

 and laughter, surely it could not be a 

 hay day, but only a performance with- 







IT TAKES A HAYING FIELD TO GIVE THE KEENEST APPRECIATION OF "THE OLD OAKEN 



lUJGKLT." 



fast but it must be spread.' Ana therein 

 lay the apparent delight of the men, 

 and the real trial of the boy. It always 

 seemed as if the men were never in 

 spirits so bantering and jocose, as when 

 they mowed that dooryard. It was so 

 light and frivolous an affair, so near 

 to the house and to breakfast, that the 

 serious work that they applied to "the 

 big meadow" would have there been 

 out of place. 



But did they mow that dooryard 



everv morning r 



"he question sug- 



gests a psychological study in these 

 later years. And why did they always 

 laugh as they mowed that yard? 

 Surely they mowed it over and over 



out an overture, a start without a be- 

 ginning. 



But now, after breakfast, comes 

 Fred stroking back his long mustache, 

 tucking up one perversely unrolling 

 sleeve, and eyeing John as one gladia- 

 tor might eye another, while the 

 mowers, half a dozen or more, were 

 taking scythes, rifles and whetstones 

 from sundry branches of the pear tree, 

 from braces and beams in the wood- 

 shed, and here and there from an over- 

 turned box. There were gruff but 

 good-natured accusations: "That's my 

 whetstone — you let it alone" or Don't 

 you know your own scythe?" But 



