WINTER. 



(2Mb farm's iX)oob-|)ile. 



"In winter's tedious nights sit by the fire 

 With good old folks, and let them tell thee tales 

 Of woful ages long ago." 



THIS was my wont just forty years age ; but 

 such nights were never tedious ; nor were the 

 ages woful of which the old folks chatted. Sit- 

 ting by the fire to-night, I am led to contemplate, 

 not so much the heaped-up logs and cheerful 

 blaze before me as that other feature of days 

 gone by, the old farm's wood-pile. 



Recalling both what I saw and heard when a 

 lad of a few summers, I am startled to find that, 

 one after the other, the prominent features of my 

 childhood's days have largely disappeared. Im- 

 proved farm machinery may delight the econo- 

 mist, but its introduction has added no new 

 charm to country life, and robbed it of more 

 than one. Was there not a subtle something in 

 the swish of the scythe to be preferred to the 

 click of the modern mower? Harvest comes 

 and goes now without a ripple of excitement 

 upon the farm. A hum of the reaper for a few 

 hours, and the work is done. A portable steam- 

 engine puffs in the field for a day, and the thrash- 

 ing is over. But what a long series of delights, 

 at least to the onlooker, when grain was cradled, 



