1424 RURAL NEW-YORKER 
Pastoral Parson and His Country Folks 
By Rev. George B. Gilbert 
Tainting the Wagons —The boys and 
the Parson have had a great time painting 
up the wagons this Summer. It has been 
a great rainy job to go at with all hands 
out under the shed. Boys as a rale like 
to paint. Go to painting yourself and see 
liow long it is before one of them comes 
and asks if he can paint something. Don’t 
say on the spur of the minute, “You’re 
too small to paint,” or ‘‘You will get it 
The Revolving Hayrake 
on your clothes.” Tell him to go and get 
some old rags on that mother says he 
cannot spoil and you will fix him out. 
Then il~ him up some paint and let him 
go at it—the first coat. In painting the 
wheels, bore a hole into a post in the shed 
and put in a big bolt or some round iron 
so that the wheel will turn and is up so 
you won’t have to break your back to get 
at it. 
How We Do It. —The rim or felloe is 
the main thing to look out for on a wheel. 
Don’t wash a wagon when about to paint 
it. Clean it dry. Then paint the rim of 
the wheel with a steel grey lead and oil 
paint, making sure to fill in the little 
crack between the rim and the iron tire. 
It is in this crack that the water gets 
and begins to eat into the wood, and then 
your tire needs setting. Touch up any 
other bare spots on the wheel. Let it dry 
while you and the boys are working on 
some other part, over night at least. We 
always mix this first coat ourselves of 
best white lead and raw linseed oil. We 
want to know what we are putting on and 
we do know that this combination, with 
a little Japan dryer, will keep the water 
away from wood and preserve it forever 
if kept covered. 
The Colors. —The top color paint we 
generally buy ready mixed—it does not 
take much if your wood is well covered 
with a good paint already. We have 
gotten in the habit of getting coach yellow 
for the wheels and shafts and black for 
ihe body. This yellow is bright and cheery, 
and does not show mud badly. As it gets 
low in the can we add a little linseed oil 
to it; if not it seems to get very thick. 
The boys touch up the ix-on work with 
black. One can run over the boys’ work 
hastily touching it up here and there, and 
what they did will be a tremendous help. 
We make our own black with drop black 
ground in japan, linseed oil. turpentine 
and coach varnish. As we carry school 
children to school for the town we have 
plenty of wagons around. We have 
painted in good shape one express wagon, 
two school buses and one lumber wagon, 
most of it two coats and the whiffletrees 
and shafts three. You want to put on the 
paint according to the wear each part 
gets. 
It Pays. —It certainly pays to paint 
up things about the farm. In the Sum¬ 
mer season, you cannot put each tool 
under cover every rain. You are using 
them all the time. A good coat of paint 
is as good as a roof if the cracks are filled 
with it so that the water cannot get in. 
To be sure linseed oil is out of sight in 
price and will have to come down, but it 
takes very little for buggy work. The 
boy have found odds and ends enough to 
mint up their cart. Ilow much a boy 
earns painting. He learns how to use 
his hands. lie learns onct in a great 
while to wipe his hands on a rag rather 
than his trousers, lie learns what paint 
is for and how to do it well, so its to 
keep away the water. It is a great train¬ 
ing for his eye as well as his hands. The 
Parson might also add it is a great train¬ 
ing- in patience for his mother! 
Paint on Y'our House. —The paint on 
a house can be patched up like a roof to 
go several years till prices drop—if they 
ever do. The window sills show the 
weather first, with the steps and the 
porches. We have been patching up the 
woodwork so it will go awhile. We are 
painting the blinds, window sills, door 
sills and doors, and wherever we see the 
little wood cracks coming. When you 
do paint your house, paint the south side 
more coat than the north Side, and all 
flat places that tend to hold the water 
one more coat still, and you will be aston¬ 
ished how long it is before you have to 
paint again. The first church the Parson 
had we painted this way, and it lasted 17 
years, and then when repainted, it needed 
it less than the parish house did which 
was painted by a contractor 10 years 
after the church. The Parson painted the 
old farmhouse in Vermont 10 years ago 
and it is in very good shape now. If 
you have a satisfactory color on a home 
don’t change it just so the neighbors will 
know the house has been painted. Keep 
the same color and. you can then paint one 
side if it needs it without painting the 
whole thing. The north end of the sleep¬ 
ing porch needed a coat this Summer and 
it got it, and that with the porch floors, 
is all the painting it Will get. 
The Woman Preacher.— The Parson 
had a new experience a while ago. He 
took part in the service in a Congrega¬ 
tional :ir rch with a woman minister. It 
was u real country church, and this 
woman minister is doing grand work 
there. It does seem a little new if not 
odd—Rev. Miss So-and-so. But why not, 
if they deliver the goods? This church- 
has been blessed with, a succession of 
Yale College students. The last one, who 
just about finished the place up, told the 
Parson that he knew one thing; that if 
he could just get the young fellows once 
into the church he could keep them, as 
he had studied psychology for five years. 
What better preparation for running a 
country church could anyone have than 
five years of psychology ! Preparation for 
running it into the ground, sure enough. 
Heads or Hearts. —These college fel¬ 
lows have all come out straight from the 
class-rooms of the divinity school with 
heads packed full of leaiming and grips 
packed full of books, but this motherly 
woman comes along with a great big 
heart, full of love for God’s children, and 
pulls this old staid church out of its hole 
in the ground, and start* it on a career 
Operating the Revolving Hayrake 
of astonishing prosperity. She has a sew¬ 
ing club and teaches the girls dress¬ 
making. Only last night, she had a big 
exhibition of the things raised by her 
agricultural club in co-operation with the 
Farm Bureau. Last week she had a big 
parish picnic, going way down to the 
shore in autos. What a fine lot of selec¬ 
tions her children spoke in that church 
on Children’s Day. ”1 want to fill their 
minds with good thoughts” the Parson 
heal’d her telling Mrs. Parson after the 
service. “I want to fill their minds with 
good thoughts.” This woman has opened 
up the old parsonage, fixed it up with 
most excellent taste, and lives there alone 
while she works for these lonely people. 
She has no car and no horse, and walks 
for miles and miles from house to house 
as the good old country parsons used to 
do. ‘‘I love this work here,” she said. 
‘T am going to ask the missionary board 
to let me stay here at least another whole 
vea r.” 
Old Home Day. —We had our “Old 
Home Day” down at the Parson’s old 
church the other Sunday. The day was 
cloudy, and it sprinkled ju ■ as we started 
down, but it did not keep the people 
from coming. Such a day.of it as we 
did have! No one lives in sight of tins 
church, but at the morning service on this 
‘‘Old Home Day” we had 74 people. A 
man who first took charge of this church 
r,4 years ago was the chief speaker of (lie 
day. After the morning 'service we all 
picnicked on the church lawn. The food 
was passed around in common and such 
an abundance of good things. Old friends 
of the church and friends of those who 
were friends of the church, came for many 
miles. There were IS automobiles parked 
about that old church during the day. At 
the three o’clock service there were 110 
people present. 
The Music. —The woman who played 
the organ was baptized in the church over 
50 yea s ago. Her son played the violin, 
having spent six yeai’s in the Boston Con¬ 
servatory. Some who live in the region 
round about, who had never been inside 
the church before, came to hear this 
music, ‘ ‘ hers came to meet old friends 
and see old faces. Others, no doubt, came 
from curiosity. But no one came who 
did not get good from such a service as 
we had. How it cheered the congrega¬ 
tion down there to have all these old- 
time friends come hack once more. We 
can think about it, and talk about it next 
Winter when the roads will be bad and 
there will bo but a few of us who cau 
come Their offerings wer e a real help, 
for they amounted to $27. We adver¬ 
tised it well in the paper, and sent out 
invitations to those who used to live down 
that way and were connected with the 
church. After we got home that night, 
before starting for another place that even¬ 
ing, we wrote down - the names of all 
those there that we could, so as to send 
them invitations next year. Have you 
ever had an Old Home Day in your 
church? Have you ever had a picnic on 
Sunday about the church? 
Use the Church Plant. —It would 
seem as though the old church had never 
been so useful to the community down 
there as it had been this Summer. (This 
is not the abandoned church where we 
took out the pews.) It offers among other 
things a place where the people who 
have Summer visitors or boarders can 
have parties and dances for their entqr- 
1 xinment. The other week they had two 
p: ’ties at the church—one Wednesday 
eve. ing and another Saturday night. Some 
youn.T . Tows were going away Thursday, 
and tney wantc . ,.” >ther happy time with 
the fellows, and more likely the girls 
round about, so they went down and with 
the victrola all wait ig for them they had 
a fine time, with cake and coffee for a 
closing lunch. 
That Hayrake. —Two people have 
sent the Parson pictures of that “man- 
killer” rake he wrote about some time 
ago. These men call it a revolver rake, 
which must be its true name. The Parson 
uses one set of pictures for Tnii R. N.-Y. 
aud cherishes the other for himself. The 
man using this one you see is 76 years 
old, and keeps up with any of them. You 
can see the rake as it is just flopping 
over. As it goes down on the hay it 
does press it down and leave in good 
condition for tumbling. This man says 
it does not gather up so much l’efuse after 
top-dressing as the wheel rakes, which is 
true. The Parson is glad to see one 
tooth is broken out. It wouldn’t be a 
representative rake of this brand if there 
were not from one to five teeth gone. You 
can also see with what pleasure a boy 
can jab his bare toes against these sharp 
points as he walks along behind it. 
Shingling the Roof. —You also see 
how the Parson and his aids have been 
shingling the shed roof. These are as¬ 
bestos shingles, and the Parson likes them. 
They will not catch fire, which might be 
a grand good thing in case of fire. They 
are easy to lay and certainly make a 
nice-looking roof. You put them only 
four inches to the weather and so there 
are a good many courses. Th» shingles 
are 12 inches long. They r. e certainly 
handy fur gutter or flashing work. You 
need not get any tin, as these bend when¬ 
ever you want them. You know" how 
hard it is to keep a porcli roof from leak¬ 
ing where it joins onto the main house. 
By prying out the clapboard and tucking 
under a row of this kind of shingle, lap¬ 
ping them about an ineh and a half, it 
will not leak another drop. 
Weather. —The Parson has just been 
reading iu The It. N.-Y. how dry it is up 
in York State—they do not see how 
things can grow at all. It hardly seems 
possible to us here iu Connecticut. We 
have just had five straight days of rain. 
In one single night of the five days there 
fell nearly three inches of water. You 
<ou!d dig post holes with comfort and 
delight right up on the driest pasture 
knoll. The water iu the wells is prac¬ 
tically even with the surface of the 
ground. It is a great season for August 
new stocking and for turnips. We got 
*o that we expected cows to get nothing 
in the pastures after the first of July. 
But here we are iu September and the 
pastures and meadows look like the first 
of June. It will all tend to save hay. 
The Potato Crop.—B ut five days ot 
rain was too much for the < < * to • 
The Rurson and His Aids Shingle the Shed 
The boys and the Parson bail theirs about 
all dug and iu the cellar,, where they will 
last till eaten. But when we went out 
today in the welcome sun to dig two 
rows we did not finish, we found them 
rotting badly. The blight struck potatoes 
in Connecticut just before the five days’ 
rain, and the tw-> together about finished 
them up. 
A Self-feeder. —We fed the pig a 
week ago yesterday and you would think 
he was dead for any sound of squealing 
you may hear. To be sure we gave hiux 
a good dinner that day—just 10(1 lbs. of 
No. 2. We dumped this into the top of a 
self-feeder we made out of stuff we found 
round the place, aud about a pound of 
spikes. The Parson will get a picture of 
it some sunny day and show you how 
to make one. It is one of those thiugs 
that tm ik % >u ’.van 1 ' to kick yourself to 
September 27, 1919 
think you did not make it long ago. What 
a lot of work it saves. Yesterday the 
Parson heard a squeak It sounded odd 
to hear one. One of the boys went over 
to the pig pasture and gave the barrel 
part of the self-feeder two or three hangs 
with a piece of board. Lo, and behold! 
The feed rattles down and the pig is fed 
for another week. The earth gives him 
gi’ass and weeds, the brook gives him 
plenty of fresh water, the mud hole in the 
corner gives him a wallow k r dog days, 
and .Old Jerry, the gander, wnts a flies 
oyer the fence, gives him. plenty of exer¬ 
cise. What more could a pig want? 
The Spirit of Life 
It doth not yet appear what we shall he. 
There lies before me as I write a little 
brown jug. It is the chrysalis of the 
Phlegethontius cpiinquemaculata. Hav¬ 
ing disposed of its truly formidable Latin 
name, let us now come down to plain gar¬ 
den English. It is the chrysalis of the 
tomato worm, of a long brown mysterious 
shape, more suggestive of a mummy case 
than a pitcher or jug; when I joggle him 
a bit—it may not be a him at all—he 
wiggles his tight-bound extremities some¬ 
what protestingly. No child, pulling up 
seeds to see if they have started growinj 
can act more foolishly than I do over my 
precious tomato-worm chrysalis. I do so 
long to have him stay alive, and I have so 
longed to witness the wonderful resurrec¬ 
tion from the dead—or seeming dead—• 
and so every year when it happens that 
one of the family brings a tomato worm 
chrysalis in to me from the garden, I must 
needs prod him at least once every day 
to see if he is still alive! Each year 
finds me a mourner over a still brown 
shape that refuses to move when I, ever 
so gently, touch him. The moth that lies 
hidden inside the brown sarcophagus I 
watch so anxiously is a marvelously beau¬ 
tiful creature whose coloring is a mixture 
of exquisite shadings of brown and gray 
with live tawny orange spots each side of 
his downy body. The eyes are very 
large and deepest velvety seal brown. 
Coiled up like a watch .spi’ing will be the 
king slender tongue that now lies in the 
pitcher-handled sheath over bis breast. To 
me the moth family are strangely, subtly 
linked with all things that pertain to the 
magic and witchery of night time. The 
very name-—Sphinx moth—suggests mid¬ 
night revelries unknown, unseen by mortal 
eyes; midsummer night’s dream frolics by 
fairies, or perhaps (who knows?) the 
souls of happy mortals who return to 
earth at night just to see how the old 
place looks and to have a lovely time— 
the kind of time youth and romance 
longed to have when encased iu the cou- 
■fining mortal body. There are things we 
cannot put into words on cold prosaic 
paper. _ or clack out on a typewriter; 
something eludes us. They are the soul’s 
night moth thoughts; beautiful, magical, 
tender, and as elusive, vague and myste¬ 
rious as the flitting night moths’ wings as 
they hold their flower carnival in our 
gardens, the waysides, and all the Clethra- 
scented rose-haunted thickets of June. 
Then, too, when you chance to see a big 
velvet-winged night moth go fluttering 
past the light from your window into the 
dusky shadows beyond, you may let your 
fancy play about him, for the chances are 
he is seeking his mate, who, in vho magic 
madness and sweetness of night, is wait¬ 
ing in the dusky shadows the nuptial hov . 
Since writing the above, another chrys¬ 
alis has been brought in from ;ae garden, 
much larger than th' first; ne.v lie, back 
to back, in a tin cup filled with garden 
dirt, and I have nam'd them Adam and 
Eve, presupposing the smaller one to he 
a female. The color of the chrysalis is a 
rich chestnut brown, and while not trans¬ 
parent vsi the upper parts of the inoths- 
io-t ..re plainly defined. The wings are 
• ..aed like the arms of the dead across 
the chest—in the moth it is the thorax— 
and the eyes are plainly seen beneath the 
thin film of the outer ease. TTow still 
they lie, hiding their resurrection hour! 
How startlingly like Egyptian mummies 
they look ! They are, to me. a symbol, a' 
hint of the resurrection of tin- dead from 
the grave. Wonderful, strange beyond be¬ 
lief, if we did not know the life and meta¬ 
morphoses of the butterflies aud moths 
were facts that anyone by observation can 
prove. To quote from a nature writer: 
“What may we not believe possible in 
transformation, when we see the forbid¬ 
ding tomato worm, after a dark under¬ 
ground existence, come out into the won¬ 
derful beauty of a velvet-winged night 
moth?” It well nigh transcends the phe¬ 
nomenal when we think that the same 
power that calls from its brown mummy 
case the superb moth, doubtless rolls the 
stone away from the tomb. The mysteri¬ 
ous little brown mummies before me build 
anew mv faith in the immortality of the 
soul, and a life renewed after death. 
Soul of nmu. in crypt of clay. 
Bide the day 
When thy latent wings shall hi’ 
Plumed f«>i* immortality. 
Then with transport marvelous, 
Gleave the dark sarcophagus, 
O’er Elysian field t<> soar 
Evermore. 
I have just peered into the tiny cup 
Eve has wiggled clear over on her other 
side! Adam, big and stodgy, with a girth 
like the proverbial alderman, stirs only 
when he is poked. Oh, how T do hope I 
shall he present at Eve’s coining out! 
Well, I shall want to see Adam come forth 
too. B. A. HITCHCOCK. 
Connecticut. 
