My Boyhood and Youth 



at his leisure during the winter, then turn in 

 the cattle to eat the leaves and trample down 

 the stalks, so that they could be ploughed under 

 in the spring. In this winter method each of us 

 took two rows and husked into baskets, and 

 emptied the corn on the ground in piles of fif- 

 teen to twenty basketfuls, then loaded it into 

 the wagon to be hauled to the crib. This 

 was cold, painful work, the temperature being 

 oftentimes far below zero and the ground cov- 

 ered with dry, frosty snow, giving rise to mis- 

 erable crops of chilblains and frosted fingers, — 

 a sad' change from the merry Indian-summer 

 husking, when the big yellow pumpkins covered 

 the cleared fields; — golden corn, golden pump- 

 kins, gathered in the hazy golden weather. Sad 

 change, indeed, but we occasionally got some 

 fun out of the nipping, shivery work from hun- 

 gry prairie chickens, and squirrels and mice that 

 came about us. 



The piles of corn were often left in the field 

 several days, and while loading them into the 

 wagon we usually found field mice in them, — 

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