THE SECOND BEST 



sweetness and light? Hardly. He is working from 

 dawn to dark, working as he never works at any other 

 time, hurrying the men with the harvest and pressing 

 into service everyone who passes by. If he dreams 

 dreams, it is not at this season; and when he does, they 

 usually take the form of prosaic figures. 



His wife, then, does she wander out in the early dew 

 to get the effect of the sparkling sun? Does she take 

 her camera and attempt to preserve some of these won- 

 derful scenes for the long winter's refreshment? Does 

 she flit like a rosy vision in her pink gingham, across 

 the fields and down the brook, to dream long hours 

 away beside its rippling water? Only in poetry or, 

 possibly, on the planet Mars, does this happy condition 

 prevail; here the lot of the farmer's wife is too well 

 known to recapitulate; and although labor-saving ma- 

 chinery has revolutionized the man's work on the farm, 

 in the kitchen the same old routine goes forever round 

 and round. Not until washing machines have been 

 supplemented by ironing machines, and both with the 

 dish-washing machine are run by electricity, and all 



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