PHASES OF FARM LIFE 



them feel at home in it, is the dwelling that fills the 

 eye. When you see one of the great cathedrals, 

 you know that it was not pride that animated these 

 builders, but fear and worship; but when you see 

 the house of the rich farmer, or of the millionaire 

 from the city, you see the pride of money and the 

 insolence of social power. 



Machinery, I say, has taken away some of the 

 picturesque features of farm life. How much so- 

 ever we may admire machinery and the faculty 

 of mechanical invention, there is no machine like 

 a man ; and the work done directly by his hands, 

 the things made or fashioned by them, have a 

 virtue and a quality that cannot be imparted by 

 machinery. The line of mowers in the meadows, 

 with the straight swaths behind them, is more pic- 

 turesque than the " Clipper" or " Buckeye " mower, 

 with its team and driver. So are the flails of the 

 threshers, chasing each other through the air, more 

 pleasing to the eye and the ear than the machine, 

 with its uproar, its choking clouds of dust, and its 

 general hurly-burly. 



Sometimes the threshing was done in the open 

 air, upon a broad rock, or a smooth, dry plat of 

 greensward; and it is occasionally done there yet, 

 especially the threshing of the buckwheat crop, by 

 a farmer who has not a good barn floor, or who 

 cannot afford to hire the machine. The flail makes 

 a louder thud in the fields than you would imagine; 

 55 



