CULTURE OF RYE. 105 



badly cut by hail and once by tVost while it was just in bloom. 

 It nsed to be a saying that rye looked well when it headed out 

 before " lection." The springs were warmer, perhaps, and 

 more moist then, and the rye lot was oftener under the lee 

 of woodland than now. At any rate, we' rarely see it come 

 up like that in honor of the election parade of these days. 



My first day's plowing was in the field of twenty-five acres. 

 The lands were long and but two rods wide. Nothing was 

 said about the furrows being straight or the headings square ; 

 such matters were of no account. It was in early July, a 

 lowery day, so early in the season that my father, I think, must 

 have considered the possibility that my ten year old enthusi- 

 asm would carry me through the whole field, so as to give 

 time to cross-plow with advantage before sowing. At any 

 rate, he started me with the plow at what used to be called 

 " cut and kiver." That was — perhaps the boys may not 

 know — to run the plow wider than it could possilily turn the 

 furrow, and so lap the furrow-slice upon a strip of equal 

 breadth that was unturned, to smother and deaden whatever of 

 grass, or seed, or moss, or life-ever-lasting, or rattle-boxes there 

 was growing. It is not so bad a plan as it seems, when nicely 

 done,and followed in due time with another plowing and har- 

 rowing, for sweeping the pelt from a friable old field. I 

 didn't make very good work of it though. Probably the ox- 

 yoke wasn't long enough, or the clevis might not have been set 

 right. We use very short yokes in our section, with not 

 much more space between the bows than inside the bow-holes, 

 to keep the oxen from staggering in and out of our sandy ruts 

 upon the road. I did not hold to the " cut and cover" plan 

 long, but fell upon such regular plowing as could be wrought 

 with the old "Ben Lyman" plow, without a coulter, in my 

 feeble and inexperienced hands. The stags were kind, haw- 

 ing about at the ends of the land with a broad sweep, browsing 

 the scanty briars and grass the whiles, and not much minding 

 my cutting away at their tails with the whip. After righting 

 up the plow from its drag upon the land-side, (a ten year-old 

 boy isn't big enough to swing the plow round the ends, you 

 know,) and entering it in the ground firmly, with very likely a 



