Vol. LXXVIII. 
Published Weekly by The Rural Publishing Co., 
333 W. 30th St., New York. Price One Dollar a Year. 
NEW YORK, NOVEMBER 29, 1919. 
Entered as Second-Class Matter, June 28, 1879. at the Post 
Office at New York, N. Y., under the Act of March 3. 1879. 
No. 4562. 
Thanksgiving, Thoughts in an Ohio Cornfield 
Lessons From a Picture of Sheep 
L ABOR SHORTAGE.—The editor sent me this 
sheep picture for my sixty-ninth birthday, 
knowing it would please me, but I want other readers 
to see it, and listen to the lessons I got from it. It 
came to me this morning when on the way to the 
cornfield, and made an impression that stayed during 
the day. Providence sent us a grand crop of corn 
this year, and it must be saved. I was a half hand 
in 1863 in a cofnfield, and am nearly back to the 
same place. I should work where I can still make 
a hand, but a neighbor of 40 years’ friendship, in¬ 
fluenced by the times, took our hired hand. As 
there is not another now who will work on a farm 
about here, and the supply of that character is too 
short to reach, I am compelled by duty to fall into 
the breach. 
GOOD THINKING.—I find the line of thought- 
now some different from my other half hand days. 
Then it was to make a “bumper,” a catapult to jar 
off hieko.ynuts, the way to get a rabbit out of a log 
or tree, or the place to get 10 cents for a muskrat 
skin, instead of five cents. Today it was this sheep 
picture and its teachings. I know of no better place 
for good solid thought than while husking corn. 
After long practice, there is no mental effort needed. 
The corn goes to the pile in proportion to the supple 
arms and willing mind of the operative. No mental 
effort is needed, but the body is an automaton. In fact, 
I know of no better place than a field for good think¬ 
ing. Instead of reciting in college class-rooms, I 
got my grades in the higher branches in the fields 
of a little farm of my father’s in Crawford County, 
Ohio. Also I fitted for an old-day singing teacher, 
and for many a forensic for “honorable judges” and 
an audience in walnut weather-boarded schoolhouses. 
NATURE’S INSPIRATION.—Yes, the quiet or the 
music of nature is an inspiration. Many of the best 
lessons the world has were drawn from pastoral 
scenes, and first given among them. Very many were 
mixed with sheep also. Read the Holy Scriptures. 
It is a natural impossibility to associate with sheep 
without moral improvement, and to get back to the 
picture, on the other side of the wire fence was a 
bunch of our dark-colored delaines, from which I 
have had many lessons, but the white “woollies” of 
the picture claimed first place today. There was a 
man, a friend, the editor, with them. 
MAN AND SHEEP.—The first thought that came 
was, that either some men had changed or 
sheep were different 2,000 years ago. Look at the 
picture. Peace and contentment, with each working 
out its own destiny; near enough for sociability, but 
no crowding, no biting nor devouring one another. 
The pasture in the picture is their world, and each 
in friendship with the others, is doing ail it can for 
the welfare of sheep and humanity. Then look 
away at man’s turbulent world. Man is mixing up 
transportation, fuel, food, iron and everything, even 
to depriving us of our reading matter, making trou¬ 
ble for himself and everybody, disturbing necessities 
Part of the Farm Flock Peacefully at Work on a Fall Afternoon. Fig. 558 
