ON THE RECOLLECTIONS OF A HIRED MAN 553 



eight miles of a dark night after a hard day's work, your fatigue 

 aggravated by the good clothes you have to wear. Arriving at the 

 school-house, you are invited to pay ten cents for a dish of watery 

 ice-cream and a square of cake, served by some young woman 

 whom you do not know and are afraid of being introduced to. 

 After the refreshments, if you are refreshed, and the programme, 

 if there is a programme, you drive home again, to arrive, perhaps, 

 a little before breakfast-time. 



But the real, the substantial pleasure of the hired man's life, 

 especially if he is hired by the day during the haying season, is 

 the rainy day. Does the pious Hindoo, his hundred cycles of 

 laborious life completed, awake to diviner music than the melody 

 of pattering rain, accompanied by the staccato of dripping eave- 

 troughs ? When you meet your employer downstairs, your face 

 wears a look of gloom. " It's too bad, isn't it, to lose that hay 

 we raked up yesterday; but" and how easy it is for your counte- 

 nance to lighten up again " but this is a mighty fine thing for 

 the corn." 



I hardly know where to classify my paragraph on The Religious 

 Life of the Hired Man, and it may be best to devote a whole 

 chapter to this important topic in the second edition of my work. 

 For the present, however, I shall put it in with the social pleasures, 

 though it must be admitted that the expedient is hardly a happy 

 one. For, in the first place, it is necessary to put on a coat and 

 vest for the church-going, and, since the same good suit does for 

 both summer and winter, it is a costume hardly suitable for a hot 

 summer day. You ride to the service seated on the front seat of 

 the spring wagon with your employer, while the women folks of 

 the family occupy the seat behind, the one with a back to it. 

 And, while your seat may be cushioned, it seems far less com- 

 fortable than the hayrack, and the whole drive is in harmony with 

 your stiff Sunday suit. On arriving, the women folks are unloaded 

 on the platform in front of the school-house, while you go with 

 your employer to help tie the team an important operation, 

 sometimes, and one involving considerable knowledge of equine 

 psychology. I remember, for instance, a certain Old Bill, who 

 tolerated no hitching rope except that which connected him with 



