THE BARN. 



79 



It was the custom of the neighbors to assemble and 

 help a settler in the building of his barn ; yet even then 

 it was quite a taslc in pioneer days to put up the big 

 beams, and a dangerous one, for the beams might fall. 

 It took an even hundred men to do the work for grand- 

 father. That was a "barn raising" worthy the name. 

 Pot-pies after pot-pies — pot-pies galore for the men — 

 were boiled out in the open in a big iron kettle, and 

 innumerable biscuits and loaves of bread, and apple 

 and mince pies, and what not; for a "barn raising," 

 like a "husking bee," along with the fun, meant plenty 

 of hard work and a commensurate amount of good 

 things to eat. And when, toward evening, the barn 

 was all done and the men were resting, grandfather 

 stood on the very crest of the ridge-pole and threw the 

 bottle that christened it. 



The barn, especially in harvest, is always filled, 

 sometimes with clov^er and timothy and rustling fodder, 

 or, again, bursting with yellow wheat and oats just 

 garnered, or stored with bins of potatoes and pumpkins 

 in their season. Wisps of hay and grain, and straw 

 and crackling corn leaves, hang from the mows in strag- 

 gling bunches about the beams and rafters. It is on 

 its broad floor, with doors flung wide, that the "husk- 

 ing bees" of former days took place, when the neigh- 

 borhood would drop in for a frolic; and in these later 

 times it is still the scene of threshing, either with the 

 burly, roaring machine, which soon has a heap of the 

 golden grains pouring upon the boards and a straw 

 stack rapidly mounting behind the barn, whither its 

 long elevator extends through the wide open doors, 

 while the sheaves are thrown from the lofts above; or 

 6 



