126 WILD LIFE IN A SOUTHERN COUNTY. 



idle if the captain knows his business. You should 

 never let your " fo 'castle " hands loll about ; the 

 proverb about the and the idle hands is notori- 

 ously true aboard ship and in the stables. 



How many a man's life has centred about the 

 wagon ! As a child he rides in it as a treat to the 

 hayfield with his father. As a lad he walks beside 

 the leader, and gets his first ideas of the great world 

 when they visit the market town. As a man he takes 

 command and pilots the ship for many a long, long 

 year. When he marries, the wagon, lent for his own 

 use, brings home his furniture. After a while his own 

 children go for a ride in it, and play in it when sta- 

 tionary in the shed. In the painful ending the wagon 

 carries the weak-kneed old man in pity to and from 

 the old town for his weekly store of goods, or mayhap 

 for his weekly dole of that staff of life his aged teeth 

 can hardly grind. And many a plain coffin has the 

 old wagon carried to the distant churchyard on the 

 side of the hill. It is a cold spot as life, too, was cold 

 and hard ; yet in the spring the daisies will come, and 

 the thrushes will sing on the bough. 



Built at first of seasoned wood, kept out of the 

 weather under cover, repainted, and taken care of, 

 the wagon lasts a lifetime. Many times repaired, the 

 old ship outlasts its owner his name on it is painted 

 out. But that step is not taken for years ; there 

 seems to be a superstitious dislike to obliterating the 

 old name, as if the dead would resent it, and there it 

 often remains till it becomes illegible. Sometimes the 



