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HOPE FARM NOTES 
"IF hen J remember how my days are 
spent /” 
Thus Milton mourned as he sat in dark¬ 
ness grieving over what he thought were 
ill-spent years of blindness. He did not 
realize how through his affliction he was 
(•> give the world a glorious heritage of 
poetry—such as no man blessed with 
sight has ever given. Strangely enough 
these words of Milton’s came darting up 
from the subconscious mind as 1 looked 
from our porch olT east—off over the roll¬ 
ing water. “How my days are spent!” 
They are vacation days, and I fear that 
you will surely call them lazy days, as I 
do. But I wish you were here to look out 
over the ocean and see the sun sparkling 
on the water and the bright, curling line of 
white as the waves celebrate their long 
journey by one last roll and smash on the 
beach. Off to the left we may see the 
rock piles at the entrance to Green Har¬ 
bor. Then the clean, beautiful beach 
sweeps around in a wide curve to Gurnet 
Point. Remembering our old baseball 
days, the odd fancy comes to me that ages 
ago Nature must have played some great 
game along this coast. The pitcher evi¬ 
dently sent the ball in a long curve from 
Brant Rock. The batter stood on that 
great blue mound off to the south (now 
it is called Manomet) and swung at the 
ball. It made a quick in curve, and the 
giant missed it. Like some of our modern 
batters who strike out, he showed his 
anger by stamping on the ground with his 
heel and slashing the ground with his bat. 
And this dug Plymouth Harbor and its 
entrance out of the sand, and the ocean 
pouring in and out with the tide has 
scoured out the channel. And the big 
ball which the giant threw ages ago is 
still there—a great mound of rock and 
soil at the harbor entrance, called the 
Gurnet. Or, if you like the illustration 
better, the Gurnet stands out like a box¬ 
er's left hand defending his heart, while 
Cape Cod is stretched out like a right 
arm to strike a blow. Now and then the 
ocean storms get into Cape Cod Bay past 
this arm. Our children walked down there 
1 he other day. All the way along there 
was only dry beach sand, with nothing but 
coarse eel grass, except now and then on 
some little ‘'hummock” a few dwarf trees 
or bushes. Yet at the Gurnet they found 
soil , with good crops of potatoes and corn 
and vegetables growing on the wind-swept 
bluff. At night the big twin lighthouse 
shows its strong light. While President 
Harding was in Plymouth big warshing 
anchored off the harbor and flashed their 
signals all about. 
* * * 4c * 
It is a clean, beautiful beach. There is 
nothing fashionable about it, for plain, 
common people of moderate means come 
here weary and worn and are blown care¬ 
free by this fine, salty air. The 'breeze 
is always blowing across the marsh. The 
sun may be hot at times, but the wind is 
never still, and there is always the cool 
ocean to dip into. There goes the steamer 
from Boston to Plymouth. The wind is 
with her, and blowing so hard that the 
thick, black smoke is blown on ahead of 
her as she speeds along. We shall soon 
see her round the Gurnet and work into 
Plymouth Harbor. During the Revolu¬ 
tionary War this coast was alive with 
British warships hunting for American 
vessels trying to sneak into Boston. It is 
only a few miles north of us that Com¬ 
modore Hull in the Constitution worked 
away from the British ships when they 
Thought they surely had him. Then there 
was no wind, but he played a few Yankee 
tricks on them, and kept his ship out of 
range until the breeze sprang up. then 
nothing could catch her. Then there was 
old Isaac Drew, who carried the gun¬ 
powder from Plymouth to Boston. He 
had the powder at the bottom of his sloop 
with a thick load of very rank manure 
spread over it. A British warship spied 
him and held him up. They sent a boat 
out to investigate. The elegant young 
officer in charge did not like the smell of 
that manure, for the wind was blowing 
right at him. lie would not have made a 
good farmer. He might have faced gun¬ 
powder. but that sulphuretted hydrogen 
and other gases were too much for him. 
So he never boarded the sloop. It seemed 
quite natural for a man to be carrying 
manure for his garden. So the boat drew 
out of range; but the young fellow wanted 
to be smart. He saw that the old sailor 
was humped-backed'—greatly deformed. So 
the officer tried to insult him by calling 
out across the water: “Say, old man. 
what’s that you carry on your back?” 
Old Isaac straightened up as well as he 
was able, made a trumpet of his hands, 
and roared : 
“ That's It linker Hill!” 
Talk about Webster’s reply to Ilayne, 
or Burke’s famous speech. I think that 
for effective argument Isaac Drew beat 
them all. The air and the sea down in 
this Old Colony are filled with these old 
legends. Many of them come back after 
50 years of slumber in the mind as we 
look off over the water in the face of the 
breeze which has been cleaned and salted 
through its long passage direct from Eu¬ 
rope. 
***** 
It is a lazy life for those of us who are 
shore birds. Wo came here that the loaf- 
7ht RURAL NEW-YORKER 
ing and tanning and salting may carry us 
safely through the long grind of work at 
home. We are shore birds who come and 
go, but the men and women who go gun¬ 
ning for us with food and fuel and other 
of life's necessities are anything but lazy 
Their harvest time runs for about four 
months, and that means 120 days of toil 
that would make a dairyman or a market 
gardener think he had been playing. We 
bought half of a cord of wood for $8. It 
is seemingly scrub oak of perhaps 25 
years’ growth. It is cut into foot lengths 
and well dried, making excellent fuel. The 
iceman who serves ns evidently has some 
little fresh pond back among the hills, 
where he tills his icehouse in Winter and 
peddles it out to shore birds during the 
hot months. There ought to a little 
money in this wood and ice, but the 
t rouble with these farmers is that Winters 
are long and dull. There is very little 
W'jnter business on a New England farm. 
You must plan to stretch an income from 
four months over a life of .12 months, and 
man rarely equals a wasp or bee in his 
ability to store and save honey. We pay 
18 cents a quart for milk and 15 cents a 
loaf for bread. We get around the bread 
question somewhat by making and eating 
many biscuits, but milk is a necessity in 
our family. Even at 18 cents a quart I 
think it one of the cheapest foods where 
there are many children. Meat, flour, 
fruit and vegetables are high. I tried to 
send vegetables on from the farm by ex¬ 
press, but the charges on a bushel basket 
were $1.(52. This rate would seem to give 
the near-by farmers a monopoly, or nearly 
so, of garden crops. With a light and 
rapid truck it would be possible to bring 
supplies from a distance, but most of the 
shore birds seem to think it is a part of 
their duty to spend money freely, and 
whatever they may think of other duties, 
they stand 'by this one. Fish and lobsters 
and clams are quite cheap and excellent 
in quality. Our folks live simply—very 
largely on cereals, fruit, fish and bread. 
Bulky food is what: goes here. Our folks 
make great use of cornmeal mush, both 
with milk and also fried. The great idea 
of this life is to live as simply and easily 
as possible with the lightest sort of house¬ 
keeping and the heaviest sort of loafing 
and lounging in the sand. That will not 
seem the right thing to some of your ener¬ 
getic and tireless workers, but be careful 
that you do not carry the overwork too 
far so that you cannot rest when your 
time comes. 
* * * * * 
We rented a furnished cottage. It is 
of wood, without plastering or much in¬ 
side finish. There are seven rooms—four 
bedrooms and a sleeping porch. Water is 
piped down to the house, and there are 
good conveniences. It stands back just 
over the brow of the beach, but from the 
upper windows we have a full view of 
the ocean. Mother and my daughter and 
six children will be here through August. 
I am down for 10 days, and the 240 hours 
are passing all too fast. On several 
occasions we have had 14 people in the 
house, but these Summer cottages were 
made to pack closely, and the beauty of 
this life is that every one is good-natured 
and very willing to put up with camp 
conditions if necessary. We drove the 
car down here from New Jersey, so that 
we are able to get about as we like. We 
have all seen that glorious pageant at 
Plymouth, and I only wish I could de¬ 
scribe it so that readers could get some 
idea of its beauty. 1 will attempt such 
a description a little later on, but it is 
one of those beautiful things which must 
be seen to be appreciated. My daughter, 
assisted by the children, do the house¬ 
work. The little girls get breakfast, and 
the rest of us sleep until an hour which 
would shock a farmer. The boys are 
worked into the ranks for sweeping, clean¬ 
ing, cutting wood and running errands. 
All have their share of such work as 
must be done. There is no other way to 
make such a life successful. The young 
folks spend a good share of their time in 
bathing. This beach is perfect. We gen¬ 
erally go into the water on an ebb tide, 
when long stretches of warm sand bars 
arc left exposed. All the children except 
little Bose have learned to swim, and 
she says she can swim with one foot. 
There is a big log in front of our cottage 
evidently thrown up by some mighty wave 
and left high on the beach. Mother likes 
to sit there in the keen wind and watch 
the children in the surf. There she sat 
the other day watching her big daughter 
and little Bose dipping into the waves. 
She was responsible physically for this 
great creature in brawn and morally for 
this tiny tot. in blue! I suppose that 
when a woman can sit on this windy 
beach in calm or lazy content and watch 
such a tribe of youngsters as ours grow- 
August 27, 1921 
ing happily and cleanly up to take the 
real duties of life she has a right to feel 
that she is working out something that 
may be acceptable in the eyes of the Lord. 
I think she feels that; for as she looks 
off over the shining ocean the face under 
the battered old bat seems 25 years 
younger than it did six weeks ago. But 
I have not told you “how my days are 
spent.” We will get to that a little 
later. h. \v. O. 
Some Boys Are Overworked 
Perhaps I am an “old foggy,” but I 
hope not. I am not yet forty, and I do 
dearly love progress, so long as the term 
seems to me to be correctly used, though 
I sometimes question if it be not applied 
occasionally to a step backward rather 
than a step forward. I certainly appre- 
cite the value of scientific physical tra'in- 
ing. reasonably and judiciously applied, 
but I don’t believe the large percentage 
of physically unfit country boys is due 
nearly so much to the lack of proper 
gymnastics, etc., as it is to the super¬ 
abundance of hard work. Even a well- 
grown and fairly well-developed boy of 
10 or 12 years is not physically able to 
rise at five o’clock, spend every minute 
till school time, and after four o’clock 
till a late bedtime, milking cows, plowing, 
harrowing, planting, skidding logs, dig¬ 
ging potatoes, etc., besides working hard 
all day Saturday and in many cases on 
Sunday as well. No doubt, someone will 
say I am painting a dark and unreal 
picture, but I can show the actual cases 
where it is woefully and diseouragingly 
real. Many men would break under the 
strain of work actually accomplished by 
these farm boys. Furthermore, the boys 
are often not well grown or well devel¬ 
oped. Their fathers are not greatly at 
fault, except perhaps in permitting the 
present economic condition to exist. The 
point is that it does exist, and will con¬ 
tinue to exist until fanning becomes suf¬ 
ficiently profitable to enable the farmer 
and his family to live decently without 
doing a suicidal amount of work every 
day of their lives. If such a time never 
arrives the farm youth must continue to 
be sacrificed on the altar of the profiteer¬ 
ing distributor of farm products—the 
speculator and the gambler, not the ulti¬ 
mate consumer—and no amount of scien¬ 
tific physical training can save him. 
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