NINETEENTH ANNUAL YEAR BOOK— PART III 177 



the bands (it was great!) and I remember one thing more, and if he is 

 still living he is still there, for they couldn't run it without a certain man 

 on a great prancing charger, with a broad scarlet sash about his waist, 

 with a great flowing beard, and I remember so well how he would sit up 

 erect and hold those lines, and with a graceful turn he would swing along 

 in front of the grandstand. He was the greatest man in the world to 

 me — as a boy! A few years ago I went out on one occasion to the state 

 fair. The fair had changed. You had great modern buildings, and in 

 your stock pavilion, where with one of my friends I went inside on the 

 tanbark, who should I see up in the center of the pavilion but the same 

 horseman, the same man, with the same flowing side whiskers and the 

 great red sash across his body — there reigned T. D. Doke still in his offi- 

 cial capacity. 



Those early days of my boyhood are the days I want in part to talk 

 to you of tonight. Those were the days when I was something of a farm- 

 er, too, and I was getting ready in my farming, always, for that week 

 off during the fair. My farming in those early days, in connection with 

 which I remember the county fair, was only done on a three-acre patch, 

 and of the three acres we had two acres in hay — full of trees, too, it was 

 • — blue-grass soil; and so it was my duty to get the hay in the mow in 

 season to provide feed for the horse and cow during the cold winter 

 months. But the hay had to be mowed before it could be put away, so 

 I came to know Londonderry Diggs, an old colored man, and he came 

 with that scythe of his, with an edge as sharp as a razor. Old Lon would 

 never take his feet off the ground as he swung his scythe through the 

 hay, and when he got through the stubble would be as smooth as though 

 cut by a lawn mower. We were getting things all ready for winter. 

 We would have to get the hay in the mow, and in order to do that we 

 would call on Father Marr. He was the drayman of the town. He had 

 two horses, both blind in both eyes, and he was blind in one eye — there 

 was just one eye to the outfit. He couldn't see where he was going and 

 would bump into a tree or a stump every twenty feet. Those were the 

 great old days! It made an impression on me, and made a lasting im- 

 pression. 



I was coming downtown in my automobile here in the streets of Des 

 Moines, coming down Grand avenue, not long ago, and my auto skidded 

 and bumped into a load of hay. One whiff of that fragrant hay and I 

 wasn't in Des Moines at all, I was with old Lon Diggs and Father Marr 

 down in Davis county. I was so full of it that when I got to the office 

 I sat down and wrote it out, and here it is: 



A LOAD OF HAY. 



Hard-paved streets and hurrying feet. 



Where it's oft but a nod though old friends meet, 



Rattle of cart and shriek of horn, 



Laughing Young and Age forlorn, 



Bound for the office I speed away. 



When my auto brushes — a load of hay! 



