490 IOWA DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE. 



And an ice cold spring with, a tinkling sound 



Makes a bright green edge for the dark green ground. 



Cool as a cave is the air within. 



Brave are the shelves with the burnished tin 



Of the curving shores, and the seas of white 



That turn to gold in a single night, 



As if the disc of a winter noon 



Should take the tint of a new dubloon. 

 Besides the churn a maiden stands 

 Nimble and naked her arms and hands — 

 Another Ruth when the reapers reap. 

 Her dress as limp as a flag asleep 

 Is faced in front with a puzzling check; 

 Her feet as bare as her sun-browned neck 



Her hair rays out like a lady fern 

 With a single hand she starts the churn. 



The poet Shelley also had this same business in mind when he wrote 

 in his "Hymn to the Earth." 



"Happy are they whom thy mild favors nourish 



All things unstinted round them grow and flourish. 



For them endured the life sustaining field 



Its load of harvest, and their cattle yield 



Large increase, and their house with wealth is filled. 



But these are visions of the past, for but few women today would 

 or could say of their son's wives, what was said of Elizabeth, while our 

 modern Evangeline belongs to the smart set and is afraid of a cow; and, 

 hard up as many of our modern Priscillas are for a John Alden, not one 

 could be found who to get him would be willing to ride a snow white 

 bull in a bridal procession. Times have changed, in one sense for the 

 better. In a sentimental way for the worse. Machinery has knocked 

 about all the poetry out of living anyway, and particularly out of the 

 dairy business. Instead of the sweet girl calling the cows home at even- 

 tide, "Co boss, Co boss," gently echoing down the pasture lane, and over 

 the quiet meadows, blending with the last song of the birds — a call not 

 unlikely heard by a lover as well as the cows, who will meet her at the 

 pasture bars and steal a vesper kiss, — we have a barefooted young cow- 

 boy mounted on a broncho, racing down to the pasture to hustle the cows 

 home; instead of the old milk house at the spring, with its clear, cold, 

 bubbling water, the pans coated with thick blankets of rich cream, and 

 a barefooted Venus churning the butter, while she 



"Closes her eyes arid, side by side 



Sees, he the bridegroom, and she the bride." 



We have the whirl and racket of an old separator, the cough of a 

 fretting, fuming engine, a gang of coarse men in wamuses, overalls or 

 fur coats impatiently waiting their turn to unload their cans, busy cussing 

 the butter maker for their short tests, and ready to steal their neighbor's 



