04 ^ PLAIX AND PLEASANT TALK 



shed. Perhaps he covered the share to keep it from the 

 elements, and save it from rusting. Or, again, perliaps ho 

 is troubled with neighbors that borrow^ and had left it where 

 it would be convenient for them. He might, at least, have 

 built a little shed over it. Can any one tell what a farmer 

 leaves a plow out a whole season for ? It is barely possible 

 that he was an Irishman, and had planted for a spring crop 

 of plows. 



After Ave got to sleep that night, we dreamed a dream. 

 We went into that man's barn ; boards were kicked off, 

 partitions were half broken doAvn, racks broken, floor a foot 

 deep with manure, hay trampled under foot and wasted, 

 grain squandered. The wagon had not been hauled under 

 the shed, though it was raining. The harness was scattered 

 about — hames in one place, the breeching in another — the 

 lines were used for halters. We went to the house. A 

 shed stood hard by, in which a family wagon was kept for 

 wife and daughters to go to town in. The hens had appro- 

 priated it as a roost, and however plain it was once, it was 

 oiTiamented now, inside and out. (Here, by the way, let it 

 be remembered that hen-dung is the best manure for melons, 

 squashes, cucumbers, etc.) We peeped into the smoke- 

 house, but of all the " fixings " that we ever saw ! A Chinese 

 Museum is nothing to it. Onions, soap-grease, squashes, 

 hogs' bristles, soap, old iron, kettles, a broken spinning- 

 wheel, a churn, a grindstone, bacon, hams, washing tubs, a 

 barrel of salt, bones with the meat half cut off, scraps of 

 leather, dirty bags, a chest of Indian meal, old boots, 

 smoked sausages, the ashes and brands that remained since 

 the last " smoke," stumps of brooms, half a barrel of rotten 

 apples, together with rats, bacon bugs, earwigs, sowbugs, 

 and other vermin which collect in damp dirt. We started 

 for the house ; the window near the door had twelve lights, 

 two of wood, two of hats, four of paper, one of a bunch of 

 rags, one of a pillow, and the rest of glass. Under it 

 stood several cooking pots, and several that were not for 



