1000 
Vhe RURAL NEW-YORKER 
Pastoral Parson and His Country Folks 
By Rev. George B. Gilbert 
Pews and Crowbars. —Whoever heard 
of this combination? When the Parson 
loads up the old car for the next trip 
down country there will 'be one uv.. addi¬ 
tion to its ecclesiastical furniture. Be¬ 
side the graphophonc and the grip of 
hymnals and the stereopticon lantern, will 
lie an innocent-looking crowbar and be¬ 
side it a small wrecking bar with its 
crooked end and its “claw” to pull out 
nails. This little bar may wreck the for¬ 
mer ideas of some good, well-meaning 
people, and it may bring the ray of light 
and happiness to many a way-down- 
county child who sees nothing ahead but 
weeding onions and watching cows in the 
long pasture where the autos and wagons 
run past. 
Clearing for Action. —The Parson 
has read how they clear the decks for 
action on the big fighting'boats before the 
battle begins. With this crowbar he will 
clear the decks for action down in a long 
unused church. We will go in day after 
tomorrow and pull up the old carpet and 
hurl it far among the •bushes. And then 
we will pry up those pews and place .them 
tenderly around the outside walls. How 
they will squeak and protest against be¬ 
ing disturbed after 117 years of quiet 
and repose! How those old wrought- 
iron, handmade nails will hug the 
flooring as those oldtime pew-rente; ' 
bugged the ways and customs of their 
childhood till the old church was wholly 
empty and its bell as silent as the church¬ 
yard down the road! What if those 
sturdy ancestors, as they wielded heavy 
hammers, had dreamed of that day 
when with an automobile the crowbar 
should swing round Geller’s Corners and 
that innocent-looking music box should 
play the stowaway under the seat and 
those happy, rollicking, nerve-tingling re¬ 
cords should be interlaced among the 
hymnals in that spacious-looking grip? 
It would have been a case of spikes in¬ 
stead of nails and Bolshevik! bombs in¬ 
stead of crowbars. 
A Disturbance. —Yes, there will be 
some disturbance in the vicinity when 
these things come to pass. There is now 
a swallow’s nest on a little jetting just 
over where the minister used to sit. and 
the bird will hop about on the stovepipe 
and fret and scold enough. So, no doubt, 
some of the good sisters will hop about 
the neighborhood after the Parson has 
gone and scold and fret with all their 
might. Last time down a large bat darted 
out from a shutter through the broken 
window as we lighted up the old stereop- 
ticon and flew round about among us as 
though to drive us out from a place so 
undisturbed. So some of the brethren 
will dart around about the people flap¬ 
ping their propaganda wings as though to 
drive us out of town—but we will not go. 
The swallow peering over the brink of its 
nest, will soon be accustomed to the sound 
of merry voices and singing, and the bat 
will take note of the attracted feast about 
the old chandelier and the people—the 
youths and the maids and the children— 
will take heart and say “Life is worth 
living after all.” 
A Momentous Question. —In the pic¬ 
ture you see that Sit and Clossie have 
taken little Charlesie Boy over to the 
dam and are trying to decide a very 
momentous question. Is it time to fill 
the pond up with water for a swim? The 
high water has made a few holes through 
the stones and mud, but it will not take 
long to make repairs. How a boy will* 
lug stone and heavy mud to make a dam! 
This week—the first in June—we have 
filled her up each afternoon and had a 
great swim just before supper. It was 
more than hot cultivating corn yesterday, 
but the Parson noticed as the boys 
stopped the horses to let them cool off a 
bit they would always turn around and, 
look down to that shining cool water 
glistening in the sun. If there is any 
one thing above another that will help to 
keep the boys on the farm, it is a swim¬ 
ming hole and time to use it. 
Fruit Trees. —The Parson was talking 
to a Grange some time ago and spoke of 
various things that might help the stay- 
on-the-land movement. After the speak¬ 
ing was over a prominent nurseryman 
told him that he thought plenty of fruit 
on a farm was greatly appreciated by 
boys and would do much to serve as an 
anchor. The Parson saw at once that 
what he said was tremendously true. 
What a lot of fruit a boy will down in 
the Fall and not die from the effects! 
The Parson’s speech that night had an 
especially happy result. Tim nurseryman 
presented Crystal Brook Farm with a 
magnificent collection of about a hundred 
fruit trees, besides flowering plants and 
shrubbery for Mrs. Parson. We have set 
them out as best we knew how and they 
seem to be coming along nicely. We had 
already sent off and got four nut trees, 
and these, too. seem to be starting well. 
Of course next Spring will be the real 
test for all the stuff. 
Mamma Kitty. —The dark-colored cat 
you see in the picture, very gingerly step¬ 
ping up toward the porch, is Mamma 
Kitty, who was on the place when we 
bought it, six years ago. Though she 
never comes into the house, or very rarely 
ever, and though it is impossible fo catch 
her or ever pet her, yet she is a much 
beloved and valuable member of the fam¬ 
ily. Once since we have been here we 
have lost a setting of eggs, but that rat’s 
pelt was on the «barn floor the next morn¬ 
ing. Every Spring one or two of those 
terrible pests come around looking for a 
rent, but always to their sorrow. We 
have never lost a chicken from this source 
and we take no precautions against rats. 
There is never a sign of one in the cellar. 
Rat Traps. —The Parson has just been 
reading about the proper way to catch 
rats in traps and the kind of traps to 
buy and all -that. But a good old skinny 
New England cat with a batch of babies 
up on the haymow is all the trap you 
want. Slip sits by at milking tin’e vot¬ 
ing for her bit. and you can well afford 
to give it to her. She never catches a 
The Children Study the Swimming Hole 
chicken, and very seldom troubles the 
birds. Her province is the barn, and 
you can pack oats up on the haymow for 
weeks before thrashing and scarcely any 
of them w ill be disturbed by mice. This 
is a very strong test. 
A Good Catch.- —In the old days in 
Vermont we used to have the black rats 
with long shining tails. We never saw 
the big brown “wharf” rats of the city. 
These rats as they grew older turned 
gray, hence the often-heard saying “gray 
as a rat.” They lived mostly in the cellar, 
seldom, if ever going to the barn for grain 
about the mangers. Father made a big 
trap from a drygoods box. This had a 
small opening near the bottom with a 
door tl • t could be closed with a string 
pulled from above. How well the Parson 
remembers the knothole through the nur¬ 
sery floor, right near the bed, through 
which this string came and was tied to 
the .bedpost. Oornmeal was put in the 
box and then, some time during the night, 
father would reach out and quickly yank 
the string. 
Great Excitement. —In the morning 
this box. if there were evident signs of 
activity inside, and there often were, was 
boosted up the cellar stairs, end over end. 
I doubt much if mother rejoiced to hear 
its banging and bumping *as it approached 
the dining room. Two or three children 
were dispatched to the barn in all haste 
to scour the haymow for cats. Old Frol 
(short for Frolic) and old Spot and pos¬ 
sibly o’d Belzy (short for Beelzebub), 
having been gathered up and brought into 
the room, the excitement of all knew no 
bounds. When all was ready and plenty 
of stout sticks had been procured, the 
door of the box was carefully opened. As 
the Parson recalls it, the older girls of the 
family generally had duties in some other 
part of the house just at this time. 
Thirteen of Them. —The morning 
that seems to‘have impressed the Parson 
most deeply was when 13 big black fel¬ 
lows, some tinged with gray, darted out of 
the small door of that box. What pande¬ 
monium and excitement! Where the rats 
got one whack the cats got two. and chair 
and table legs got a dozen. Another Win¬ 
ter morning seven came out of the hole, 
but from three to five were a fair catch. 
Of course in a few mornings the supply 
in the cellar would run low. For some 
reason or other this method of catching 
rats seems to have been foregone after a 
Winter or two. Gould it have been pos¬ 
sible that the women folks found the room 
a wee bit untidy after the fracas and 
slaughter were over and raised objec¬ 
tions? 
Almost Human.—“H ave you disposed 
of M-amma Kitty’s baby?” asked Mrs. 
Parson at the dinner table today. The 
Parson has been guilty so often of this 
sort of premeditated murder that he was 
glad to bo not guilty for once. “Mamma 
Kitty has been complaining and hunting 
around all day.” And so she has. She 
went with the Parson as he put the cows 
in the pasture and complained and scolded 
all the way. She has just been to the 
back door and had a long talk with Mrs. 
Parson. The boys must try to find her 
baby, which seems to have disappeared, 
when they come home. 
A Daily Visit. —One Summer after we 
came here we moved for a few weeks in 
a building by the lake, up through the 
woods. We certainly did not take Mam¬ 
ma Kitty with us. nor did anyone see her 
watch us go. But every single day, at 
just about such a time in the afternoon, 
Mamma Kitty would appear from some¬ 
where or other, and just stay around a 
little while and then be gone again. She 
did not come for food, as she never would 
eat. and always had her milk at the stable 
when we were gone. 
Poor Puss. — The other cat in the pic¬ 
ture, on the veranda, i6 Poor Puss. The 
Parson does not know why he should be 
called Poor Puss, unless it is because lie 
is such a lazy, good-for-nothing, and 
doomed soon or later to fall a victim to 
the Parson’s disgust. He is •Shelley’s cat, 
and Mrs. Parson’s accustomed “Shelley is 
so fond of him” so far has had the effect 
of postponing the fatal day. The one 
other cat on the place is “Trixy,” and she 
certainly is a great out-of-door hunter. 
The meadows, and especially the swamp, 
are her province. The way she can go 
down into the wet land and come back 
with a great big long-bodied short-tailed 
mouse, just as though she had him all tied 
to a stake, is a most remarkable thing. 
Last Fall she would appear at the bed¬ 
room window upstairs, having shinnied up 
The Family Cats Visit the Porch 
the Wistaria vine to the roof, with one of 
these mice, at just daybreak. Morning 
after morning she did tins, till one morn¬ 
ing she appeared with the top of one ear 
taken right off in some scrap she had had 
with something. For a long, long time, 
she refused to ever go near the swamp 
again. 
A House Mouse Trap. —She is the 
house cat and all the mouse trap you need. 
Give her access to the pantry and she 
will clean them out or scare them out in 
one night. It is the same with the attic. 
She prefers to nestle her babies in Mrs. 
Parson's closet upstairs. One Fall while 
they were up there there came a very 
cold snap. Trix sat one day behind the 
parlor stove blinking her eyes in warmth 
and comfort. Suddenly she had a mater¬ 
nal thought. Were not her babies up in 
that cold closet? She went up the stairs 
like a shot, got those kittens by the nape 
of the nock and brought them down and 
put them on the floor back of the stove. 
The boys would tease her and carry them 
all up again, but her conscience troubled 
her and she would bring them down each 
time. 
Such Mothers. —Sometimes the Par¬ 
son wonders of we humans are-the poorest 
mothers of all. What animal would de¬ 
sert her babies or leave them to be brought 
up by others, as so many mothers do to¬ 
day? “This is the boy’s table,” said a 
woman the other day to us as she brought 
out a small sort of a sewing machine. 
“They eat by themselves on this. Think 
of our children eating off by themselves! 
Our happiest time is at the table. If lit¬ 
tle Charlesie Boy goes to bed before sup¬ 
per, how we all miss him ! We can hardly 
bear to have one of them gone. “Each one 
gets his own breakfast and eats by him¬ 
self,” said this same woman. “And for 
the dinner at night. Daddy and I go to 
the hotel.” And their two little boys eat¬ 
ing alone at home! 
- The Proxy Plan. —How these people 
can leave the matter of bringing up their 
children to nurse girls or anyone they 
can get. is a mystery that Mrs. Parson 
can uever understand. One very prom¬ 
inent woman in town is forever going 
about telling other women what they 
should do or not do. The Parson just 
heard she was going on such a tour out to 
Chicago. As she was about to open a 
meeting some time ago, a woman from the 
audience stepped up to the platform and 
begged leave to congratulate her on the 
marriage of her elder son. This woman 
had just read it in the paper. But it was 
the first the mother had heard of it! On 
further inquiry, she learned that her only 
daughter was maid of honor at this same 
wedding. Of course she had heard noth¬ 
ing of that. What family life! Their 
children are bundled off to boarding-school 
June 21, 1919 
just about as soon as they can feed them¬ 
selves ! Then they wonder that they don’t 
think more of their parents in their old 
age! 
Those Chickens. —We paid a man $0 
to set his incubator for us. We furnished 
140 eggs and he turned out 100 fine smart 
chicks. As eggs were worth 50c a dozen 
at the time, this made the day-old chicks 
cost just about 12c each. We had six 
besides, making 112. We gave them to 
four hens to brood, and besides one being 
stepped on and one getting up on the sill 
and walking along and jumping into a 
pail of water in its desire to got drowned, 
they are all alive and growing wonder¬ 
fully. With the exception of a 15c can 
of oatmeal there has not been a thing 
bought for them. They have milk, and 
corn which the boys crack up. Every 
few days we cultivate up the ground iii 
front of them and they have a picnic on 
angleworms. This ground will soon be 
planted to beans and can be cultivated 
just the same. Tt is damp, rich earth, and 
a tremendous place for worms, llow these 
little fellows scratch ! They go all over 
the place, working like fiends, and are 
good property and no work at all to speak 
of. 
The Crops.- —Tt is a great year for hay 
about here in Connecticut. Clover is iii 
full bloom the first week in .Tune, and 
haying can hardly wait till the boys are 
out of school. All the farmers about here 
have turned to clover instead of Alfalfa. 
Almost everyone had a small piece of the 
latter a few years ago, but now the Par¬ 
son would not know where to go to find 
one. It. winterkills far too much to de¬ 
pend on. Alsike clover is the favorite, 
with a little Northern Red mixed in. 
Some seed down with oats and about an 
equal number sow the grass seed in the 
growing corn. Eggs hang at 55c a dozen, 
wholesale, and the stores pay 00c for 
farmers’ butter. Any old hens brings 35c 
per lb. That old lady down in the new 
kind of church sat in that big rocking 
chair again last Sunday. A stranger 
happening in was handed the morning 
paper while he was waiting for the service 
to begin, and seemed very glad to see it. 
A Letter from France 
My husband has been overseas for 10 
months, but we send on The R. N.-Y. to 
him. lie is at present in the University 
at Beaune, studying agriculture, and ex¬ 
pects to remain there until such time as 
liis division returns. Perhaps your read¬ 
ers might be interested in the description 
of the country that he gives in a letter of 
May 8. lie says in part: 
“This is a very prosneroue part of 
France agriculturally. There are many 
cattle and some sheep. I have been oil 
two trips by motor trucks to different 
herds, and although their cattle and their 
methods are not like anything I ever saw 
back home, they are very interesting. I 
think that the beef question interests 
them primarily, although they get eight 
francs for their butter. There are several 
cheese factories where they make cheese 
from skim-milk in big copper kettles 
swung over a fireplace. They skim the 
milk by hand and then skim the whey 
from the cheese again. Whole milk 
doesn’t seem to be considered. 
“The rye is heading out. The wheat 
is about three inches high. Now they 
are planting potatoes. Of course a great 
part of the country is in grapes. I don’t 
see with the quantity of wheat that 
France raises why she couldn’t feed her¬ 
self if it wasn’t for the enormous amount 
of land that is in vineyards. There are 
many pear trees here, all trimmed flat 
like a fan, and a good many Brown-tail 
moths on them, too. They like to grow 
their apples in a border around their gar¬ 
dens—anil seldom let them get more than 
two or three feet high. 
“They seem to let plums, cherries, 
peaches, almonds, walnuts, etc . alone, but 
the grapes are pruned severely—either to 
a stake or to one or two wires not more 
than 2J4 feet high. The French do not 
use fences, but put their crops in long, 
narrow strips not more than a rod wide 
and any length.. They raise wheat, bar¬ 
ley. black oats, rye. sugar beets, potatoes, 
Alfalfa, turnips and beans. 
“Most of the cattle are fawn and white, 
and large, weighing 1,200 or 1,400 pounds. 
In Ohanteloup the land was not as fertile 
as it is here. There was a lot of moor 
and woodland. Their cattle were chiefly 
white or light yellow and distinctly beef. 
Their crops and methods were about the 
same. On some farms they get along 
with a two-wheeled cart, a plow, and a 
short hoe. In fact, most everything is 
done by hand by the women. The men 
go out too, but it is very noticeable how 
much more work a woman will do. 
“You know they tax all vehicles accord¬ 
ing to the number of wheels. In the 
poorer parts, like La Brosse. where I 
spent three days last August, when a man 
asked a girl if they didn’t have carts with 
four wheels, she said, “Yes, and some with 
five’ (or words to that effect) for she 
had never seen a four-wheeled vehicle 
and she thought he was joking. That 
illustrates how much they travel. Dijon 
is only 30 miles from here, but yet there 
are lots of old folks here who have never 
been there. 
“T like the French, but I wish you 
could see this country, for you would 
appreciate America more if you did, I am 
sure.” 
He is on detached service from his own 
company now, while he is studying at the 
university. A. E. T. 
Dover, Mass. 
