552 READINGS IN RURAL ECONOMICS 



and church socials. At the present time some farmers furnish 

 a small house and garden, with privileges of pasture, to a married 

 man and his wife. Both board themselves and do their own 

 washing. Under such conditions, the man receives from twenty 

 to twenty-five dollars per month. Since top buggy and other 

 society expenses are saved under these circumstances, this is 

 probably the most economical way to hire out. 



From a consideration of the income of the hired man, we are 

 naturally led to Chapter III, The Pleasures of the Hired Man. 



Among these I will mention first the athletic pleasures. It 

 seems peculiar that the man who works hard with his muscles 

 from about five in the morning until half-past eight in the even- 

 ing, with a short nooning, of an hour perhaps, should, especially 

 if he be a young man, turn to athletics the first thing after the 

 chores are done in the evenings. Foot-races, jumping, turning 

 pole, swimming, all are popular, especially if some neighbor lad 

 comes over from the next farm to. join in. If the weather is such 

 as to prevent farm work a meteorological condition rare in the 

 records of the "hand" hired by the month the boys hunt for 

 a pitchfork handle suitable for a turning pole, or search for four 

 horseshoes of sufficient uniformity to serve as quoits. On many 

 an evening after the work was done I have joined a party to go 

 swimming in some neighboring mud hole. When the ponds, so 

 common on Kansas farms, are just newly made, they may be 

 grass-bottomed famous watering places then, and the rendez- 

 vous of all the boys of the neighborhood ; but in an alluvial region 

 this happy state of affairs is but transitory. You walk into the 

 water until there is a temperate zone of warmth about your middle 

 while your feet are several inches deep in the frigid mud, and 

 bubbles of gas, stirred from their resting place at the bottom of 

 the pool, rise gurgling along your legs. While you are in deep 

 water you can keep reasonably clean, but on coming out, the first 

 thing after completing the bath is to look for some place to 

 wash yourself. 



Among the pleasures not athletic are the summer ice-cream 

 socials, destined more for the glory and advancement of the 

 church, however, than for the pleasure of man. You ride six or 



