MEMORIES OF THE 



shoveled from the stables or loaded and drawn to the fields; but 

 it required considerable work in the spring, before the grass was 

 much started, in breaking up and scattering the dry, flat cakes 

 of hardened manure, which if left alone would dry up, bake 

 down and injure the grass, rather than help it, but if broken and 

 scattered around, it dissolved and made a nice, even top-dress- 

 ing. To do this, a tool called a ''dung-knocker" was used. It 

 was a square, hardwood mallet, having edges so beveled as not 

 to gouge the ground, with a strong handle about four feet long. 

 With this a man or strong boy could strike the hard, flat little 

 heaps so as to break them fine and at the same time send them 

 flying for rods. It was considered very funny work by the boys, 

 particularly if there were two engaged, so as to compete on either 

 long shots or wide scatter. It was a farm sport of great utility, 

 and a muscle developer which far excelled golf. I think it was 

 more interesting than croquet, which it particularly resembles. 

 It is a well-known fact to those familiar with this old farm 

 practice that the "retired farmer" was the first to become stuck 

 on croquet, and, generally, was the first of the male persuasion 

 to appear on the village green with his knocker or mallet. In- 

 deed, through a sort of evolution or Darwinian development, 

 many a well-known athletic sport is but a modified outgrowth of 

 an early attempt to combine work with pleasure. 



The so-called improved methods of modern farming do not 

 include this particular work — at least I have never seen it re- 

 ferred to in the reports of official agriculturists; but I did see, 

 at a farm mortgage foreclosure sale, a two-hundred -dollar 

 manure pulverizer and spreader, which helped bring its unfor- 

 tunate owner to grief and called to my mind the much simpler 

 method which I have above described. 



Between times, the fences were fixed up and the cattle 



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