80 DANVIS FARM LIFE 



the women and children who go out to gather 

 them mider such blue skies and amid such bloom 

 of clover, daisy, and buttercup, and sung to so 

 cheerily by the jolly bobolink. 



About the Fourth of July haying begins. The 

 rank growth about the barns is hand-mowed, and 

 the mowing-machine is trundled out from its rust- 

 ing idleness, and, being tinkered into readiness, 

 goes jingling and clattering afield, where, having 

 fairly got at its work, it gnaws down with untiring 

 tooth its eight or ten acres a day. The incessant 

 unmodulated "chirr" of this modern innovator 

 has almost banished the ancient music of the 

 whetted scythe, a sound that for centuries had 

 been as much a part of haymaking as the fra- 

 grance of the newmown hay. But its musical voice 

 cannot save it. The old scythe must go, and we 

 cannot deny that the noisy usurper is a blessing to 

 us all in lightening labor, and, not least among us, 

 to the boy, for whom I cherish a kindly feeling, 

 and for any softening of whose lot I am thankful. 



In the days before mowing-machines, hordes of 

 Canadian French swarmed over the borders to 

 work in haying, in crews of two or three, jiggling 

 southward in their rude carts, drawn by tough, 

 shaggy little ponies. They were doughty work- 

 men in the field and at the table; merry-hearted 

 and honest fellows, too; for, when they departed, 

 they seldom took, beside their wages, more than 



