PHASES OF FARM LIFE 239 



there is contentment, humility, and sweet, homely 

 life. 



Blessed is he whose youth was passed upon the 

 farm, and if it was a dairy farm his memories will 

 be all the more fragrant. The driving of the cows 

 to and from the pasture, every day and every season 

 for years, — how much of summer and of nature 

 he got into him on these journeys! What rambles 

 and excursions did this errand furnish the excuse 

 for! The birds and birds' nests, the berries, the 

 squirrels, the woodchucks, the beech woods with 

 their treasures into which the cows loved so to 

 wander and to browse, the fragrant wintergreens 

 and a hundred nameless adventures, all strung upon 

 that brief journey of half a mile to and from the 

 remote pastures. Sometimes one cow or two will 

 be missing when the herd is brought home at 

 night; then to hunt them up is another adventure. 

 My grandfather went out one night to look up an 

 absentee from the yard, when he heard something 

 in the brush, and out stepped a bear into the path 

 before him. 



Every Sunday morning the cows were salted. 

 The farm-boy would take a pail with three or four 

 quarts of coarse salt, and, followed by the eager 

 herd, go to the field and deposit the salt in hand- 

 fuls upon smooth stones and rocks and upon clean 

 places on the turf. If you want to know how good 

 salt is, see a cow eat it. She gives the true saline 

 smack. How she dwells upon it, and gnaws the 

 eward and licks the stones where it has been depos- 



