12 FOREWORD 



of spinach on his chin!" You have heard him fiddle 

 away like two-sixty at " Pop Goes the Weasel !" You 

 have grinned while he sang through his nose about the 

 great big hat with the great big brim, " All Ba-ound 

 Ra-ound With a Woolen String !" 



Yes, and you used to read about the Farmer, too 

 Will Carleton's farm ballads and legends; Riley's fine 

 verses about the frost on the pumpkin and "Little 

 Orphant Annie " and " Over the Hill to the Poor- 

 house !" And when Cousin Letty took you to the Har- 

 vest Home Supper and Grand Entertainment in the 

 ToWn Hall you may have heard the village choir wail : 

 "Oh, Shall We Mortgage the Farm?" 



Perhaps even yet, now that you are man grown 

 business or professional man of the great cities per- 

 haps even yet, although you long have studied the 

 market reports and faithfully have read the papers 

 every day perhaps that first impression of what a 

 farmer was like still lingers in a more or less modified 

 way. So that to you pretty much of an "Old Hayseed" 

 he remains. Thus, while you have been busy with other 

 things, the New Farmer has come striding along until 

 he has "arrived in our midat" and to you he is a 

 stranger. 



Remember the old shiny black mohair sofa and the 

 wheezy, yellow-keyed melodeon or the little roller hand- 

 organ that used to play " Old Hundred " ? They have 

 given place to new styles of furniture, upright pianos 

 and cabinet gramophones. Coffin-handles and wax 

 flowers are not framed in walnut and hung in the 

 Farmer's front parlor any more; you will find the 

 grotesque crayon portrait superseded by photo enlarge- 

 ments and the up-to-date kodak. The automobile has 

 widened the circle of the Farmer's neighbors and 



