JULY 22 
THE RURAL NEW-YORKER. 
THE STORY OF STONY BROOK FARM. 
HENRY STEWART. 
CHAPTER V. 
(Continued from page 473.) 
“ I think that is right. Always he open and 
above board whatever happens Barley, and 
its time you and Patience should let her 
father know what there is between you. He’s 
been a hard man to his family, always; but 
he can’t have his own way for ever.” 
And so Barley had an interview with Defi¬ 
ance Bartlett, which, however unsatisfactory 
it may have been in one sense, surprised the 
parties most concerned, by its unexpected 
placidity and apparent good temper. Barley 
was even invited into the seldom used parlor, 
where the bright brass andirons were never 
stained by a Are, and the clean hickory logs 
heaped upon them never gave out the heat 
that was latent in them. 
The old man drew out from Barley the con¬ 
dition of affairs, which, however, was well- 
known to him, for very little indeed escaped 
his keen and watchful perception, and seemed 
quite mollified and pleased at the favorable 
prospects of Barle 3 r ’s affairs. 
“ And so you are going West, Barley, are 
you? I’m glad to hear on it, because the West’s 
the place for a young man to get on. And I 
guess you'll soon get to feel above us folks 
here, and so its just as well as no promises is 
made, and then there’ll he nothin to take back. 
I guess you’ll be ns proud as a nigger on ’man¬ 
cipation day, with your face all black with 
coal, aud your money in your pocket, and 
come back and marry Squire Barney’s 
daughter. Oh yes! I know how you young 
folks feel; you needn't tell me. It’s a deceiv’n 
business Barley, this love makin, and this 
marryin, and wimmin’s not to be depended on: 
nor men nuther sometimes. Jest wait a bit 
Barley, till your able to keep a wife before 
you think about takin one; mebbe you'll 
forget all about Patieuce, before a year's out, 
and then there’ll be no hearts broke and no 
promises. When you come back agin, come 
and see us Barley. Oh yes, your welcome to 
go and see Patience, and say good hye; but 
don’t keep your mother waitin for you 
too long, as you’re goin away so soon. Good 
bye Barley. I wish you luck.” 
“ Well, that’s a God-send, anyhow, to get 
the young chap off so easy, and soft sawder’s 
cheaper than fightin any day; though I like 
a good square fight better’ll soft sawder, an 
its my way. But when he’s out of the way 
it’ll be easy managing Patience. So there’s 
no use flaring up jest yet. It’ll keep awhile.’* 
Barley’s news cheered up Patience some¬ 
what, and the permission given to Barley to 
come and say good-bye to her, reassured her. 
The young lovers built up many hopes on 
Barley’s good fortune, and the long distance 
to Northern Michigan seemed very short in 
their hopeful aud sanguine anticipations. An 
hour was qui ;kly passed in promising never 
to forget each other, and every night precisely 
at nine o’clock to take a loving look at the 
north star, with the idBa that it should be a 
bond of thought between them at one precise 
instant. Alas, what futile hopes are based on 
human love. Just as these lovers foolishly 
forgot that while one was fondly regarding 
the north star at nine o'clock in Connecticut; 
the other in Michigan would be ougaged in the 
less romantic but more profitable employment 
of eating his supper at half-past seven; and 
when nine o’clock came for him she would be 
slumbering all unconscious of his devotion; so 
do we deceive ourselves and exist in fond de¬ 
lusions ami vain imaginations. The young 
live on the bright side of the hill of life and 
feel the warmth and glow of the sunshine; but 
when one pusses the crest and descends the 
other slope the sunshine is gone, and often the 
way is cold and dreary and all shadow. By- 
and-by as the foot of the hill is reached and 
the road becomes rougher and darker, some 
of us even anticipate with a sort of hope the 
relief that will come when the briuk is reached 
from which we leave the path and descend 
into the quiet restful darkness iu which our 
mortal journey ends. But what would life be 
were the first half all shadow? Who can 
justly realize the loss of those who have no 
sunshine in their early days ? and how their 
clouded path dim* and hardens their finer 
perceptions, It is something worth living for 
to look buck over past life, although it has 
been one of bright delusions ; but yet few of 
us who have reached the shady side of life 
would care to pass over the suuuy side again. 
For with the experience we now have, there 
would be little warmth in the sunshine, if 
indeed, we should not carry about with us an 
atmosphere of cloud which would hide the 
brightness from us. 
But the parting came at last: Barley Mer¬ 
ritt left full of hopefulness, but Patience re¬ 
mained full of au undefined dread of her utter ! 
oneliness and of what might happen in the 
future. And few can realize what may be the 
loneliness of a child or youth but they who 
have experienced it, either in the abandon¬ 
ment of orphanage or in the companionship of 
a parent whose disposition estranges his child 
from him. Defiance Bartlett chuckled to him¬ 
self iu the prospect of outwitting the lovers, 
and of soon carrying out his pet project of 
marrying the high and low farms and of get¬ 
ting control of the united Stony brook farm 
as it formerly existed, into his own hands. As 
to the welfare of the parties more directly in¬ 
volved, that neveroccurrei to him. His mind 
was incapable of appreciating the likes and 
dislikes of others when these were in conflict 
with his own wishes. And yet this man was 
not a monster, but a representative of a class 
who go through the world elbowing their way 
right and left; crowding here and there; over¬ 
setting the weak ones that may cross the path; 
and trampling them under foot or even crush¬ 
ing th8m down, that they may raise them¬ 
selves upon the prostrate forms under them. 
Alas! what a selfish thing is man! 
CHAPTER VI. 
As one might stand upon the bank of a 
mighty stream aud gaze upon the surging 
flood, hearing upon and within its current 
a freight of good, bad aud indifferent; of 
rich soil from its head waters to build up 
fertile alluvial meadows below or to enrich 
the fields over which the waters may spread; 
of trees torn from the banks, and carried 
down to be overwhelmed in a crowded and 
jumbled mass of ruins upon the first shallow, 
or crushed and broken and swept away in 
fragments; of seeds washed from distant 
sources and cast here and there to take root 
and grow and cover the new made soil with 
verdure and bloom; of infection perhaps 
from polluted sources which poisons wherever 
it is strauded; so the great stream of humani¬ 
ty which has been flowing and surging and 
spreading westward for a century has borne 
upon its bosom all those different sorts of per¬ 
sons, good, bad or indifferent which go to 
make up communities. 
But the forces or influences which set these 
in motion, who can enumerate ? What histo¬ 
ries are hidden in each case ! What hepes 
started one; what disasters forced others; 
what necessities or accidents induced these 
and what evils, if not crimes, drove those. 
What a vast ocean of humanity has over¬ 
flowed the great West! To realize it, even 
in part, one must have viewed the bare region 
when Illinois for instance, was a boundless 
prairie, and Iowa a billowy ocean of green 
verdure, unbroken in either case, except by 
a white covered wagon—the prairie schooner 
—which, like a ship at sea, rose and fell upon 
the waves of the green surface, as it mounted 
a rise and sunk into a depression, thus rising 
and sinking until it vanished, leaving the be¬ 
holder alone with nothing but sky and the 
green and parti-colored prairie about him. 
And now where this man, not yet old, 
might have once stood in perfect solitude, he 
may now see populous cities and busy towns 
and the whole landscape dotted thickly with 
dwellings and parcelled out into fields and 
farms and groves. In those days for a man 
to go into Iowa and Michigan was to reach 
beyond the verge of the wilderness and, as 
it were, to dive into some profound space 
whose bounds were infinite; and it was only 
the ambitious and enterprising who dared 
the adventure. 
It was but a few year’s after this period 
when Burley Merritt was induced by the 
circumstances that have been related, to go 
West. Tho hope of bettering one’s fortune by 
that enterprise rarely or never failed, for 
to “go in and possess the land” was all the re¬ 
quirement for an industrious man to place 
himself in ease and comfort in a few years. 
And yet this general prosperity was effected 
only by the loss of millions upon millions of 
dollars invested in various enterprises by men 
who sought outlets for theii surplus capital. 
Mines, furnaces, mills, railroads all provided 
lucrative employment for labor and generally 
this was of the most intelligent class of men, 
among whom there is always the greatest 
ambition and the most enterprising spirit. To 
supply the demand for all this labor, farms 
were needed, and as the industiies grew into 
existence aud development, the farms fol¬ 
lowed closely upon it, as its necessary re¬ 
sult or its corollary. 
It was to a busy scene of such a kind, 
that Barley Merritt was led by fortune. 
Irouburg was a newly settled village in the 
great iron district of Northern Michigan. 
There the purest iron ore lay in mountain 
masses, ready for the labor of the quarry- 
man, and the miner, while dense forests of 
the most magnificent timber spread away for 
hundreds of miles until the verdure broke upon 
the borders of the great plains where now 
the Bonanza farmers ply their busy enter¬ 
prises. With the opening of mines, came the 
erection of furnaces in which charcoal was 
used for fueL The making of the enormous 
quantity of charcoal required by a furnace 
kept numerous gangs of wood choppers, coal 
burners and teamsters busy continuously and 
the forests began soon to disappear, as if 
by enchantment, and farms and fields oc¬ 
cupied their place. Barley Merritt’s exper¬ 
ience in burning charcoal, was valuable in 
such a locality, where skilled labor com¬ 
manded high wages, but where, anything 
other than labor of the hand, was at a sad 
discount. And he entered into his new em¬ 
ployment with enthusiasm. Full of hopeful¬ 
ness, young, and happy in the ability to sup¬ 
ply the needs of his widowed and dependent 
mother and of laying by a surplus to provide 
for his antiepated marriage, he gave his whole 
mind to his employment. This was to arrange 
the cord wood cut in the forest into semi-globu¬ 
lar heaps, much in form like an inverted 
bowl and to cover the wood so arranged with 
damp leaves raked from the ground and these 
with a layer of soil. The heap then being 
set on fire slowly charred and became char¬ 
coal.—[To be continued.] 
--- 
A GOOD FAMILY COW. 
WM. H. MAHER. 
My wife wanted a cow. The papers put 
the notion in her head, and I am inclined to 
think that “ the papers ” are responsible for 
a large share of the notions that pass current 
among people, and make life more or less of 
an uncomfortable grind. My wife reads the 
papers carefully, believes every word they 
say (if they are her shade in politics), and 
endeavors to put what she reads into practice. 
Early last Spring the papers began to write 
about the adulteration of milk. I was forced 
to buy a test tube for her, and her hair has not 
yet grown over the spot where it was burned 
during one of her experiments. What she 
may have discovered I do not know; but we 
changed milk men seven times in eighteen 
days. 
When she had about settled down on milk 
that was not adulterated, the papers had an 
article on the effect cows’ food had on their 
milk, and on a dark background of ink it was 
shelve that a cow fed on brewers’ grains gave 
an entirely different shaped globule from that 
of a cow fed on corn or oats. Another series 
of experiments were inaugurated iu our 
kitetyn, and it was discovered that every 
milk-man within twenty miles of the cityused 
brewers’ grain to a greater or less degree. We 
withdrew our patronage from the milk men 
and became a customer of one Mrs. O’Grady, 
who had two cows living in the house with 
her, attended to, as she assured my wife, “as 
if they were babies.” 
I began to hope that we had at last reached 
a rest on the cow question; but one night the 
baby had an attack of colic that was most ex¬ 
asperating, and I never worked so hard in my 
life as I labored that night to give ease to the 
infant. When at last peace was restored I 
went back to bed, bat not so my wife. With 
garments enough to barely protect her from 
a rather raw night, she got oat her test-tube 
and other paraphernalia, and by the time I 
was ready to get up for breakfast she was 
ready to declare that Mrs. O'Grady had been 
feeding cabbage to the cows. Knowing that 
cabbage at that time of year was worth fif¬ 
teen cents a head, I meekly suggested that I 
did not believe Mrs. O’Grady could afford to 
use them for cow-feed, but my wife loftily 
said, “ what her analysis proved to her she 
was not going to doubt on my say-so,” and I 
thereafter remained dumb ou the subject. I 
think the dialogue between her and Mrs. 
O’Grady would be worth recounting, but I 
shall content myself with saying that in my 
opinion Mrs. O’Grady did not come out second 
best. 
After this, for awhile, we patronized a man 
living near us. and I hoped again the milk 
question was settled. But our unlucky paper 
seemed to be edited by a man who had cow 
on the brain, and we were treated to an arti¬ 
cle headed, “A Good Family Cow.” First, 
we were given some figures regarding a cow 
owned by a man in Australia; 1 have forgot¬ 
ten what they were, but I remember they 
were eye-openers. Then followed arguments 
going to show why every family should own 
its own cow. I have no difficulty in remem¬ 
bering this part of the article; I heal d it often 
enough quoted during the next two months to 
have it by heart. 
“ An ordinary cow,” it went on, " will av¬ 
erage ten quarts of milk a day, for ten months 
in the year, giving, say, 8,000 quarts; worth, 
at milk-men’s prices, $180. Her feed during 
this time can be bought for $S0, if allowed to 
run dry two months, her calf will pay for her 
keepiug during that period, so that a good cow 
is equal to an income of $150, while there is 
no doubt altoufc your milk, either as to quality 
or cleanliness.” 
When I first heard this I remarked that it 
was writteu, without doubt, by a man who 
would not know a cow if he should see one, 
and that the last chore I should want to shoul¬ 
der would be the care of a cow. But little did 
I suspect how much hold that article would 
take on my wife’s desires. 
The baby made herself extremely numerous 
that night, and, as I had every reason to be¬ 
lieve, from pure maliciousness; but my wife 
moaned that the milk was under the proper 
specific gravity, and that cholera was very 
close at hand. I foolishly informed her ‘of a 
headache I had, but did not mention the 
cause, and she brought out an array of figures 
to show that my blood was growing thin, be¬ 
cause there was two per cent, less butyric 
acid in the milk than good milk ought to con¬ 
tain. 
Day in and day cub nothing happened that 
was not traceable to our not having a cow, 
until at last I began to believe that a cow 
would be a good investment. And further¬ 
more, I felt that I was confining myself too 
closely to the store, and the taking care of 
the cow, morning and evening, would be pure 
recreation, giving me just that much more of 
outdoor exercise. 
I felt well repaid for my resolution when I 
announced it to my wife. If I have conveyed 
the impression that she is anything of a shrew, 
I have done both her and myself great injus¬ 
tice; a better hearted woman does not live, 
nor a more gracious one, when she has her 
own way. 
I began to look out for “a good family 
cow;” but before I had been at it many days 
I was forced to confess that such were scarce. 
I could find nobody who wanted to sell, 
though there was a man here or there who 
would sell, simply to accommodate, for twice 
what the cows were worth. But at last I 
heard of a man who had a good cow. He was 
in business near me, and an interview with 
him disclosed these points relative to his cow: 
she was eight years old and just in new milch; 
in the neighborhood where she was reared she 
was known by every one os the best cow 
there, and her owner was the most envied 
man in the community; she gave anywhere 
from twenty to forty quarts of rich milk per 
day, while in size she was small, and conse¬ 
quently the expense of keeping her would be 
light. The present owner had been trying to 
get her for three years, but just as he had 
succeeded in it his business changed somewhat 
so that he could not take care of her In an¬ 
swer to my question as to how much milk she 
was then giving he could not answer, because 
she was bringing up her calf and he only 
milked what the calf did not want. The price 
for cow and calf was $45. 
I said I would go and look at her, and 
talked about cows and milk in what I consid¬ 
ered was a way to impress him with the be¬ 
lief that I was a granger born and bred. As 
she stood in the stall she looked to me pretty 
much as any other cow would look; but l was 
there, and it behooved me to show that I knew 
something about cows. I looked at her from 
the rear as knowingly as I could, taking care to 
keep a safe distance from her heels; I looked at 
her from her right side and from the left side, 
as well as from the front; with a partition 
between us I rubbed her back, and would have 
handled her horns had she allowed it; finally 
I said I thought $40 was a fair price, but the 
owner said $00 would not buy her if ’twas 
any one but me who wanted her. I said I 
would take her at $45. 
During these days that I had been looking 
after a cow, carpenters had been at work 
putting up a shed for her, at an expense of 
$40 more, but as it was a permanent invest¬ 
ment I thought nothing of this. I ordered 
hay and meal down town, and our drayman 
and I started for cow and calf. I may in the 
long years to come forget our work putting 
that calf on the dray, but I doubt it. We 
proposed to tie all his legs together so he 
would lie on the bottom of the dray, knowing 
the cow would stick close to him. The dray¬ 
man suggested that I should take the two 
hind feet, and he the other two, and at a given 
word we’d lay his calfship ou his side, and 
then tie him up. I may have been too eager, 
or the calf may have been coo slow, but just 
as I got down behind him to catch his feet he 
raised them in the air, planted them with 
tremendous force in my chest. I sat down to 
make a note of the fact that this was not a 
good way to approach calves. 
When we finally had him on the dray, I 
was assigned the duty of sittiug on his head, 
in order to make sure of him; 1 am satisfied 
my ridiculous appearance that day damaged 
my reputation as a temperance man in a 
serious manner. But we got our stock safely 
housed, and I felt that a new era was opening. 
My wife and family came out to examine the 
investments, and my wife limps to this day, 
because of the calf stepping on her toes. I 
gave the cow some hay, then started off to 
find someone who would tell me how to milk. 
“Don’t go at her as if you're afraid,” was 
the caution given me, but, however I may 
have ‘ gone at her,’ it is a solemn fact I was 
most awfully afraid of her. I let the calf 
gratify himself, and then I proceeded to do 
my duty. If you have never sat down in close 
proximity to the hind foot of a cow you have 
no idea of the moral courage needed at such 
