1110 
The RURAL NEW-YORKER 
Pastoral Parson and His Country Folks 
By Rev. George B. Gilbert 
Fourth of July. —Here it is the 
Fourth of July, and too hot to stir. Flos¬ 
sie lias just brought around the thermom¬ 
eter from the north side of the house, and 
it says 07. The air seems as though it 
came right out of an oven. Tattle 
Charlesie is fretty, and mother does not 
get along at all with her work. It is 
hotter out under the trees than in the 
house. We have finished the haying, all 
but the swamp, which has to be mowed 
by hand, and will have to wait till it is 
cooler. There have been just two rainy 
days here in six weeks. It is impossible 
The Boys and Their Stilts 
to get hay wet if you try. and the only 
danger is that it gets too dry. 
Flan tiie Work. —We plan the hay¬ 
ing so as not to have to pitch when it 
i<? so terribly hot. We get in, in the 
morning and towards night, and after 
supper. We leave the last load on the 
wagon so as to put it off when it is cool 
in the morning. All our hay has to go 
up hill in the barn. We leave one small 
bay for the oat straw. If it is possible, 
the boys have been promised that we will 
have a horse unloader by next Summer. 
The high beams may have to be lowered 
in tin 1 barn, but it probably can be done. 
How hot it is up under the rafters, mow¬ 
ing away hay ! How pesky mean of any¬ 
one who tries to crowd and send up the 
forkfuls as fast as they can ! A bov is 
willing to work hard and do hard things 
on a farm, but it does go against his 
grain to do things by hand when they can 
be done so easily by machinery. Xo won¬ 
der the old-timers drove the boys from 
the land. 
Harrowing. —Next to the pitching off 
and mowing away hay. the Parson looks 
back with groanings that cannot be ut¬ 
tered to the long, weary miles upon miles 
that he traveled behind a harrow. IIow 
the old-time New England farmer hated 
to have anything made easier! The Par¬ 
son's father bought the first, mowing ma¬ 
chine that was ever ushered into his town 
in Vermont. 11 is father ordered the thing 
off the farm, lie declared it would cut 
so close that the grass would die. Sure 
enough, amidst the astonished gaze of the 
neighbors, father said he did pare it down 
pretty close, and when a hot, dry spoil 
came on it turned brown and died. But 
what were 10 men mowing all day in tor¬ 
rid heat and two or three boys turning 
grindstone all the time compared to the 
death of a few spears of Timothy! And 
of course this small loss was wholly un¬ 
necessary. The Parson well remembers 
when a new spring-tooth harrow came 
from the station and lie saw. wired on 
the top of two of the teeth, a fine easy 
seat. The harrow had wheels and the 
Parson will believe to his dying day that 
it would have done no harm whatever to 
have a light, skinny boy ride on that seat. 
What was the thing sent with it for. any¬ 
way ! And what did father do with it. 
before the harrow was ever put together 
or even unloaded! lie took that seat as 
though it might have been some infernal 
machine and carried it stealthily down 
the hatchway that Bill Perham made and 
tucked it high up over a sleeper, where 
it has probably reposed this 40 years. 
How little he dreamed of my feelings as 
I saw that seat disappearing. If it only 
could have been tried out, and if it proved 
too hard for the horses we would have ac¬ 
cepted the verdict. Under no conditions 
would he ever have a wheel-harrow on the 
place, and the Parson has always more 
than half believed it was because one just 
had to ride on it. , w 
That Hay Rake. —Did you ever see 
one of those hay rakes that you had to 
walk with? When it was full of grass 
you had to lift up on a long handle or bar, 
and the teeth would stick in the ground 
and it would flop over. How the Parson 
would like a picture of that kind of rake! 
The man who invented the thing was a 
genius, even if a diabolical one. He 
made it all of wood and quite simple con¬ 
struction. .so that it could easily last for¬ 
ever. Of course it was forever getting 
wound up with hay, and if you didn't turn 
it over just so it would keep flopping over 
and over clear across the lot. It was 
especially pleasant to have your bare feet 
forever hitting the ends of the sharp 
teeth. The wheel rakes came in and the 
neighbors all had them, and they used to 
call over and ask us how long we were 
going to use the “man-killer.” Boys are 
willing to work, but it certainly goes 
against the grain to see others doing a 
thing by horse power while they have to 
swelter away by hand. 
Electric Lights. —As the Parson 
writes, great chestnut poles are being set 
up along in front of the house, and we sit 
on the porch and plan how many im¬ 
provements we can have when the juice is 
turned on. Mother has found the gaso¬ 
line flatiron a wonderful labor saver, but 
of course electricity will beat it. Prob¬ 
ably the vacuum cleaner will be the great¬ 
est boon of all. We will have the house 
wired with these labor-saving devices in 
mind just as much as the lights. The 
neighborhood had to pay extra to get the 
company to come through here, appealing 
once, I understand, to the Public Utilities 
Commission.- We have to pay $35 a year 
for five years as a minimum charge, but 
think it will be well worth it. 
Those Stilts.- —In the picture you 
will see two of the boys on stilts. What 
a _ time they have had making these 
things! Flossie has some, and also Sit 
had to have a set. All the old bed slats 
on the place have been used up, and a 
good deal of other lumber. It has been 
hard to find a hammer or any nails for 
some time. The most trying thing about 
the craze for these things has been trip¬ 
ping over them wherever you wanted to 
go. Of course there has been no regular 
place to keep them, and they would never 
have been put there if there had been. 
How easy it is to run and get a tool, and 
how hard it is to put it back again ! It 
seems out of the question for children to 
do it, and pretty much so for us grown¬ 
ups. They have tried every kind of stunt 
with these stilts. They have run races 
and walked off the porch and even gone 
through the pond in (he brook. There 
have been many falls and some tears, and 
now it is all over. They never think of 
stilts at all, and the Parson has turned 
most of them into kindling wood. 
All That IN'ay.—H ow much are we 
all this way? We take some notion and 
go crazy over it and try to get everybody 
else to do the same thing, and then give it 
up altogether. The Parson knew of a 
prominent lecturer and writer on farming 
who got the bee of Winter wheat in his 
bonnet. Just about the time he got a 
whole lot of people raising Winter wheat 
he went out of it entirely himself. Pas¬ 
turing hogs has been having a great run 
about here. It is all very well if you can 
plow the land afterwards, but to put hogs 
in a swamp or on rocky land that cannot 
be tilled simply means that they root up 
the good old native pasture sod and you’ve 
got a barren waste to sit down and look 
at for years. This has been the case with 
Alfalfa about here. One great farmer 
has written more articles and had great 
pictures in the paper, and has been dub¬ 
bed “Alfalfa King,” and now his farm 
has been cut into parcels and put up at 
auction, and a man who had been there 
told the Parson that acres and acres of 
it were but a barren waste. 
That Hand Fart. —In the picture you 
see the boys and their eart. When we 
bought the cart it had, of course, the reg¬ 
ular body and one nice seat on top. It 
has irritated the Parson not a little be¬ 
cause the boys would never let that car 
rest in peace with the body and all as it 
came. Sometimes he would want to use 
it to draw something in, but where was 
the body? The seat has long since been 
discarded and its -whereabouts unknown. 
They persisted in taking off the side¬ 
boards. Then after a while the rest of 
the body went. Then one day the Parson 
came home and found it in this present 
shape. The board had been taken off the 
double ripper and put on here. Quite a 
creditable job had been done on the front 
fifth wheel by utilizing a brace iron from 
a telephone pole. The Winter wood box 
had been put on tile rear end for Fharlsie 
Boy. A curtain rod serves as a king¬ 
bolt. and, to cap it all, a brake had been 
made from a wire and a broom handle. 
Their Fart. —In this form they are 
perfectly happy with it. They coast down 
the front walk for hours and hours at a 
time. They can pusli it back and help it 
along with their feet. There is plenty of 
room on it. The Parson sees the point at 
last, though he admits it has come hard. 
As this wagon came it was an imitation 
two-lmrse lumber wagon for carting loads 
in. But miniature horses were not to 
use if, nor were miniature, loads to be 
carted in it. Child nature has persisted 
iu making it over to suit itself for the 
healthy play it longs for. Besides all this 
it is a constant challenge for improve¬ 
ments. Their handiwork and their in¬ 
genuity are going into it. The Parson 
will fret no more. lie will put the trim 
little body that came on it up over the 
woodshed and there it will repose. 
Those Church Pews Again. —The 
other afternoon the Parson headed down 
for that abandoned church again. It was 
terribly hot and dusty. Some eight miles 
out he overtook an ox team and a .small 
boy riding on the luxurious seat of the 
iron plate on the front axle. This mere 
boy had bumped 10 miles and a half over 
to the station with a load of ties that 
day, and was now bumping home again. 
How his face lighted up as he saw the 
Parson’s old car. “Church tonight?” lie 
shouted. “Yes, yes,” the Parson screamed 
as he pulled by. A little further on he 
met two older brothers with the two- 
liorse team. They, too, had been over 
with ties. One immediately sprang off 
the wagon and into the car. The Parson 
thought the other two could never get 
home in time for the party that night. 
But he guesses they never covered the 
home trip as quickly before! He had 
been working in the church, five miles 
beyond, but a little while when the horses 
appeared, and to his utter astonishment 
hardly any time longer when the steers 
appeared. Those steers must have thought 
they were after the doctor. 
The Wrecking Bar Wrecked.— 
These same boys helped the Parson finish 
taking up the center row of pews. They 
were spiked down so that it bent the 
wrecking bar all out of shape and put it 
out of commission. Worse than that, 
they were mortised into the overlays or 
sleepers, or whatever you would call them. 
But we got them up and swept out the 
accumulations of over 100 years (one 
man claimed the church was built 140 
years ago), and such a good time as we 
had that night. There were 35 there. 
One team came with nine in it. IIow 
happy everybody was. AVe had bottled 
soda and cracker jack (sold at cost) for 
refreshments. “When’s the next one?” 
was the constant question, even before we 
closed. 
Fine Rain. —Here it is Monday morn¬ 
ing, and the Parson must finish his let¬ 
ter. Such a fine rain as we had yester¬ 
day and last night, and it is cooler today. 
We always plan to have new potatoes the 
Fourth, but did not this year; it has been 
very dry here. Such a time to get hay! 
Every day last week was a perfect hay 
day—you only had to hustle to get it in 
before it all dried up. It was just like 
baking it in an oven. We never had such 
a nice lot of hay, and not a load of it wet. 
We had a big horse for mowing this year, 
and it is surprising how easily and 
smoothly this big strong horse pulled a 
one-horse mowing machine. Of course it 
pays to keep the knives sharp, and makes 
all the difference in the world. 
Fairly Bisy. —Someone has asked the 
Parson “what he did.” Well, he does not 
do as much as he ought to do, of course, 
but manages to keep fairly busy, and 
would be willing to let any of the other 
parsons try following him about. lie 
left Saturday at four o’clock with the 
car loaded wi,tb a complete camping out¬ 
fit. which he left in a echoolhouse 15 
miles down county, where he is going 
camping with the boys the last of the 
week. From there he went IS miles fur¬ 
ther to where one mission was having a 
picnic at the shore. From here in the 
evening he went to another town to make 
some calls, and then to the next town 
for over night. 
A Warm Sunday. —Sunday morning 
he had service at nine o’clock, and 
preached. Six miles from there he had 
another service at II o’clock with ser¬ 
mon. After a hasty bite lie went 22 miles 
to a State institution where he had ser¬ 
vice and sermon at 3:30 o’clock, after¬ 
wards telling stories to the people on the 
lawn. From here he went home—most 
40 miles—had a bite, loaded up the car 
and started for a back country school- 
house seven miles away. It rained some 
when he started and soon there was a 
perfect flood on. He got about half way 
July 10, 1010 
when the car skidded badly iu trying t" 
get up a steep pitch in the woods and lie 
nearly went into the ditch: Three times 
he tried to make the hill, but the road 
was too slippery and he had no chains 
with him. He had to turn back for 
home, and the old car, soaked and skip¬ 
ping badly, limped into the barn It 
seemed tired out! After a little visit the 
I arson sat down to the old tvpewriter 
but there was no write in him. Mrs’ 
Parson convinced him that for a day of 
rest after a hard, hot week on the farm, 
he had done enough. 
All Sorts and Conditions. —The 
Bishop was down to a schoolhouse with 
the Parson a week ago. The Parson lias 
been going there off and on for some 37 
years. Since that time the nature of the 
population has wholly changed. The 
Bishop wanted to know what races were 
really there, and so hi- asked the people, 
and the Parson wrote the result on the 
blackboard. This was what lie found: 
Magyars, Fzecho-Slovaks. Swedes, Ital¬ 
ians, French, Irish and Americans. But 
we all had a fine time together, and the a 
B ishop gave us a good talk, and we sang 
hymns, and said our prayers, and then 
went out under the trees and had some 
crackerjack and confections and went oil 
home, dropping the empty boxes by the 
wayside. 
N\ as It Wise? —Just as we were going 
to. begin the service a farmer went by 
with a load of hay and his good wife fol¬ 
lowed behind with the rake over her 
shoulder. They are good people. Straight 
American family, hard-working and hon¬ 
est. But the Parson thinks they made a 
mistake. There was no sign of rain. 
For the sake of themselves and for the 
community, he thinks it would have paid 
them to have come to that service. What 
do you think? 
Value of Yeast Cakes and Milk 
IIow any farm and farmhouse can be 
a real success without a copy of The 
R. N.-Y. coming into that home weekly 
is a puzzle to us—my husband and me. 
I cannot hasten fast enough my con¬ 
gratulations to you on your publishing 
those milk articles, and especially the 
papers by Thomas B. Osborne giving 
report of his research work, and putting 
the same iu such understandable lan¬ 
guage. I have known just enough about 
what has been known of “vitamines" to 
appreciate the subject as soon as pre¬ 
sented. You will lie interested, possibly, 
to know that last Fall, when the “flii'' 
swept our country 1. being a victim, so 
speak feelingly, certain doctors recom¬ 
mended the taking of one yeast cake 
dissolved iu warm water daily for three 
days. Now I am something of a student 
of house economics, as well as practicing 
the art, and believing firmly that “to 
him who knoweth to do good and doeth 
it not. to him it is sin.” I knew, or 
thought I knew, the composition of yeast 
cake. I scorned the virtue claimed. 
However, those taking yeast escaped the 
“flu.” I was months recovering. I am 
trying to prove how I tried Mr. Osborne’s 
findings on some late-hatched chicks, 
which with those of many of my neigh¬ 
bors were doing poorly. It is the kind 
of ailment where the chicks stood droop¬ 
ing, a little lower each day. till their 
heads bowed completely and life was ex¬ 
tinct. So reading Mr. Osborne’s second 
article on Sunday, on Monday I tried 
the yeast cake dissolved in one-half cup 
tepid water and put this in their wet 
mash. The result is like his with the 
rats. Three days now and the droopy 
chickens are not to be found. They are 
as lively as anybody’s chicks can be. 
Again thank you for publishing all such 
articles; we shall look for more of them. 
The paper has seemed to improve this 
The Cart Fired Their Oich 11 'ay 
past year, although it has always been 
hailed with delight every week. 
Maryland. mary b. beckwith. 
Investments at Home 
I noticed on page DOS the article by 
W. W. Reynolds on “Why the Boys and 
(lirls Leave the Farm.” I think this is 
worth several years’ subscription to any 
farmer. It is just what is going on 
around here; several hundred thousand 
dollars around our town and a few miles 
in the country has gone to other towns 
to build up factories, roads, streets, 
churches, schools, colleges, etc., and our 
boys and girls go, too. just as fast as they 
are old enough. One security seller sold 
about $8,000,000 in Ohio, mostly among 
farmers, too. I would like to print that 
on a short piece of paper and mail it 
with our circulars. 
Ohio. W. T. MITCHELL & SON. 
