150 MERINO SHEEP 



preparation was made within house and barn. 

 The best the farm afforded must be provided for 

 the furnishing of the table; for the shearers were 

 not ordinary farm laborers, but mostly farmers 

 and farmers' sons, and as well to do as then* em- 

 ployer, who was likely enough to shear, in his turn, 

 for them. Whoever possessed the skill of shearing 

 a sheep thought it not beneath him to ply his well- 

 paid handicraft in all the country round. For 

 these the fatted calf was killed and the green peas 

 and strawberries were picked. The barn floor and 

 its overhanging scaffolds were carefully swept, 

 the stables were littered with clean straw, the 

 wool-bench was set up, and the reel full of twine 

 was made ready in its place. Those were merry 

 days in the old gray barns that were not too fine 

 to have swallows' holes in their gables, moss on 

 then* shingles, and a fringe of hemp, mayweed, 

 and smartweed about their jagged underpinning. 

 There was jesting and the telling of merry tales 

 from morning till night, and bursts of laughter 

 that scared the swallows out of the cobwebbed 

 roof -peak and the sitting hen from her nest hi the 

 left-over haymow. Neighbors called to get a 

 taste of the fun and the cider, to see how the flock 

 "evridged," and to engage hands for their own 

 shearing. At nooning, after the grand dinner, 

 while the older men napped on the floor, wool- 

 bench, or scaffold, with their heads pillowed on 



