PHASES OF FARM LIFE. 251 



Sometimes the threshing was done in the open air, 

 upon a broad rock, or a smooth, dry plat of green- 

 sward, and it is occasionally done there yet, especially 

 the threshing of the buckwheat crop, by a farmer who 

 has not a good barn floor, or who cannot afford to 

 hire the machine. The flail makes a louder thud in 

 the fields than you would imagine ; and in the splen- 

 did October weather it is a pleasing spectacle to be- 

 hold the gathering of the ruddy crop and three or 

 four lithe figures beating out the grain with their 

 flails in some sheltered nook, or some grassy lane 

 lined with cedars. When there are three flails beating 

 together it makes lively music ; and when there are 

 four they follow each other so fast that it is a contin- 

 uous roll of sound, and it requires a very steady 

 stroke not to hit or get hit by the others. There is 

 just room and time to get your blow in, and that is 

 all. When one flail is upon the straw, another has 

 just left it, another is half-way down, and the fourth 

 is high and straight in the air. It is like a swiftly J 

 revolving wheel that delivers four blows at each rev-i 

 olution. Threshing, like mowing, goes much easier 

 in company than when alone ; yet many a farmer or 

 laborer spends nearly all the late fall and winter days 

 shut in the barn, pounding doggedly upon the endless 

 sheaves of oats and rye. 



When the farmers made " bees," as they did a 

 generation or two ago much more than they do now, 

 a picturesque element was added. There was the p . . 

 stone bee, the husking bee, the " raising," the " mov- 



