4 
§EE©-TfHE AH© HARVEST 
‘‘Us boys are all going to the outlet, fishing. 
Tom says the fish just jump out of the wa¬ 
ter themselves there, they are so thick.” 
How or when the child learned to read, 
I am sure I cannot tell. She never stopped 
to take a lesson. She began with the red 
letters on the box of the new wagon, the 
letters and words on the farm machinery. 
Then I heard her spelling out the words on 
the outside of the paper flour sacks, as she 
climbed on to the load that papa had just 
brought from town. The summer she was 
five she vexed the boys to death nearly, by 
insisting upon milking. From the time the 
cattle were yarded at evening until they 
were turned toward the pastures next morn¬ 
ing that child spent her waking hours in 
the yard with her little pail, stripping first 
one cow and then another. She was kick¬ 
ed heels over head twice, but that did not 
alter her dangerous practice in the least. 
There was one gentle old cow that we 
wished to beef in the fall, and did not care 
how ^oon she went dry. So Patty was told 
that if she would only milk old Lady White- 
foot, she could milk her all herself, no one 
else should touch her. Thus we compro¬ 
mised matters and still left a channel open 
for “natural development.” We thought, 
of course, the child would get the cow 
dried up^in a few days, but we soon had to 
furnish her a larger pail to milk in, and 
when winter set in she had petted up the 
old cow and fed her extra until she gave 
more milk than any cow on the farm. 
Meantime, where were those principles 
slumbering that were inherited from the 
most precise and lady-like of grandmothers ? 
—principles in regard to training young 
girls to indoor pursuits; training them 
from the’cradle to be housekeepers; prin¬ 
ciples about the refining influences of nee¬ 
dlework—principles which are certainly 
correct, but where, in this case, has there 
been a chance for application ? 
“Mother,” said the Modoc to me one very 
cold day, “Pat is going with me now to 
look at my traps.” “Why, surely, not in 
this snow and wind; take John, Jr.” “John 
don’t want to go. I’d rather have Pat.” 
“But she’ll freeze!” “O, you ’fraid, little 
mother!” said Patty, dancing around to find 
the rat spear; “don’t you see I have on Tom’s 
cap, Dick’s coat and Harry’s dogskin mit¬ 
tens? Then just look at my new boots!” 
And away they went, carrying the sun¬ 
shine of childhood out into the winter 
storm. 
fche celebrated her eighth birthday by 
skinning two sheep—poor little things that 
died “for want of breath,” and that the 
masculines said were not worth skinning. 
The boys were away with all their pocket- 
knives, so she did the work with a table- 
knife—not to be turned aside by trifles, you 
see. The result added forty-five cents to 
her private purse. 
Shall I own that what perplexes me 
most is the way John has turned the tables 
on me. “Just look at your ‘dainty blos¬ 
som,’” said he, one rainy day, when she 
had volunteered to clean out the drain be¬ 
low the stables—a job the boys refused to 
do until shamed out by her energetic work. 
In a streak of compassion for his little 
tomboy, and remembering her isolation 
from girlish companions and sympathy, 
her papa one day invested in a piano-harp, 
thinking, perhaps, that music would have 
refining charms to sooth the savage little 
breast. The instrument, when closed, looks 
like a fat, over-grown sewing machine, 
without its machinery. When opened, by 
folding back its rosewood covers, a dul¬ 
cimer-like arrangement of strings and let¬ 
ters is disclosed over a sounding board. It 
is operated upon with hammers. When 
handled by its inventor, its music suits me 
better than any I ever heard. 
But with Patty, the music begins when 
she comes dancing in from her great out¬ 
door interests. “Now I’m going to begin 
to be a lady,” and with one kick of an 
agile foot she sends her rubber boot flying 
under the lounge, another kick and its 
mate lands in the woodbox. Her mittens 
are “fired” into some corner, and pulling at 
the strings of her hood, which are tied in 
fourteen hard knots, she slips them out over 
her chin, up past her nose, and the hood 
gees flying, where, she never stops to see. 
When she wishes to replace it on her head, 
she has only to reverse the operation—poke 
her head up through the neck of it, give 
her chin a lurch forward, one twist of the 
mouth, and the thing is settled. 
