86 AUTOBIOGRAPHY 



The frost, too, was an enemy to be reckoned with 

 and often injured the corn and the pumpkins. By 

 reason of press of work or of over-moist ground 

 planting might be delayed until the first days of 

 June and replanting to make good the skips, might 

 be done still later, in which case an early frost 

 might produce much soft " hog-corn.'* 



I have said there was a great deal of uninspiring 

 work on the farm; but after burning the brush the 

 most beastly work was hoeing corn. If the grass- 

 land was mowed one year and then pastured for 

 one or two years, the timothy and clover " ran 

 out " and the blue grass ran in and formed a ter- 

 ribly tenacious sod. Such fields were planted to 

 corn that intro-tillage might serve to eradicate the 

 " pesky " blue grass. The plowing and fitting of 

 the corn ground was imperfect, for the tools were 

 primitive, and so the blue grass roots which already 

 had a start, outgrew the corn, especially if the 

 weather was cool and moist. Bluegrass, in some 

 localities, is counted an excellent pasture and even 

 a good hay grass, but with us it was a great pest 

 almost as much so as the Canada thistle. The in- 

 struments for intro-tillage did not make much im- 

 pression on the leathery sod, and so it was custom- 

 ary to hand-hoe corn from three to five times. Oh, 



