FARM IMPLEMENTS. 239 



repelled with churlish rudeness. I realize that our 

 thriving farmers are generally absorbed in their own 

 plans and efforts, and that the agent or salesman who 

 insists on an examination of his new harrow, or pitch- 

 fork, or potato-digger, is often extravagant in his as- 

 sumptions, and sometimes a bore. Still, when I re- 

 collect how tedious and how back-breaking were the 

 methods of mowing Grass and reaping Grain with the 

 Scythe and Sickle, which held unchallenged sway in 

 my early boyhood, I entreat the farmer who is peti- 

 tioned to accord ten or fifteen minutes to the setting 

 forth, by some errant stranger, of the merits of his 

 new horse-hoe or tedder, to give the time, if he can ; 

 and that without sour looks or a mien of stolid in- 

 credulity. The Biblical monition that, in evincing a 

 generous hospitality, we may sometimes entertain 

 angels unawares, seems to me in point. A new im- 

 plement may be defective and worthless, and yet con- 

 tain the germ or suggest the form of a thoroughly 

 good one. Give the inventor or his representative a 

 courteous hearing if you can, even though this 

 should constrain you to make up the time so 

 lost after the day's work would otherwise have 

 ended. 



I suspect that the average farmer of our complete- 

 ly rural districts would be surprised, if not instructed, 

 by a day's careful scrutiny of the contents of one of 

 our great implement warehouses. So many and such 

 various and ingenious devices for pulverizing the 

 earth applying fertilizers to the soil, planting or sow- 



