842 
The RURAL NEW-YORKER 
May 31, 1924 
Pastoral Parson and His Country Folks 
By Rev. George B. Gilbert 
From Work to Play. —Little Clossie 
comes home from school with many new 
expressions; he picks up all the latest, 
and lately he has got the athletic fever. 
He wanted a horizontal bar put up. They 
had one up at school. He consulted the 
Parson about it, where it could be put 
and how to go at it. It was decided it 
could be put up in connection with the 
hammock post. Now the hardest work 
can be made into play! The Parson 
would no more have thought of asking 
Clossie to dig a post hole. Now the 
place where he wanted to put this chin¬ 
ning bar is full of roots and stones, but 
it was no time before Clossie had the big 
crowbar and shovels and an old ax on 
the ground. lie had a regular well dug 
before the Parson had time to examine it 
and found it was not in the right place. 
With perfect cheerfulness he went right 
to work and dug another hole, dug out 
the stones and cut off the roots with the 
crowbar, incidentally breaking the best 
shovel handle right in two. All like play 
to him, just because he was so interested. 
Crying Out Sakes. —Then for a bar 
he got an iron pipe round back of the 
barn and cut it off with a hack saw. Then 
for a post ! The Parson had one over by 
the garage, all set in the ground for a 
gate post—a good one. He readily made 
the sacrifice, however, and told Clossie 
he could have it. Then to bore the holes 
through for the bar. A farm auger is a 
farm auger for a fact; always rusty and 
no pull to it. The handle gave way and 
you had to use a big monkey wrench on 
it. It went so hard you expected to 
twist the thing in two every inch you 
moved it. But at last the Parson got it 
through the post, still on the ground, 
where you can handle it well. Getting 
that auger through the standing post was 
another matter; the Parson put it off and 
dreaded tackling it; how could you ever 
get that miserable auger through the top 
of that post, so hard to push against it, 
7 or 8 ft. from the ground V The Parson 
came down from the lot for supper, and, 
behold, the hole was all through and the 
bar in; Clossie had done it alone. IIow 
well the Parson remembered the horizon¬ 
tal bar that father helped put up out in 
the garden at the old home In Vermont. 
That had a wooden crossbar. How many 
time we tried to go over that bar before, 
one day, while waiting for dinner, one of 
us did it. There was more excitement 
than if we had passed an entrance exam¬ 
ination to a university. But that was 
many, many years ago. “Can you go 
over it?” asked the Parson. “Hardly,” 
said Clossie. “No one in school can.” 
The Parson took a chance. He jumped 
and grabbed the bar and in a second was 
on toft of it. “For the crying out sakes,” 
said Clossie, as his eyes quite stuck out 
of his head. 
The First Party. —The Parson re¬ 
members seeing a picture. "The First 
Party,” and how the little girl was being 
all dolled out, ready to go. But way 
down country last night a whole lot of 
children had their first party. We hired 
a town hall for the first time and there 
we had a real party. About GO came— 
largely children. We did not put it in 
the paper—just sent word to the school. 
And, above all, there was a family way 
down in the woods, with eight children, 
that never knew what a party was. It 
was for them that the Parson chiefly had 
this party. And for a while not one of 
them appeared. It was rainy; perhaps 
they would not dare to strike out in the 
dark through the woods. But right in 
the midst of a wonderful game of “Tap 
on the back” four from that family ar¬ 
rived ; poor little Billy and little Elton 
and Paul and Carrie. It was all up hill 
for a big mile and a half through the 
woods. How excited they were, and how 
they had run. Their hair was just wet 
with sweat. To be at a big. real party, 
and play games and hear the orchestra— 
the piano and the violin and the tenor 
banjo and the cornet and the saxophone. 
And to have ice cream—all the ice cream 
you could eat, and cake with it! It al¬ 
most haunted the Parson that night; he 
could see them hurrying and scurrying 
and tugging and running, all hold of 
hands, with a little old lantern, up 
through the woods in the mist and dark 
and threatening rain. These little chil¬ 
dren come way over to church, but can¬ 
not come so far to our parties at night, 
and they always hear us talKlng and ar¬ 
ranging these good times, so we had to 
have one over nearer their school, both 
for them and a lot of other children who 
live over that way. 
The Goslings. —When we went off to 
the party that night we left the 10 gos¬ 
lings in a box on the back porch. The 
Parson intended to bring them in the 
kitchen when we got back. He never 
dreamed there would be any danger from 
rats, though this time of year they keep 
coming up the brook. We had not lost 
a goose this year, and the Parson was so 
pleased with them and had taken such 
pains with them. But we heard them 
crying even as we drove up from the 
party in the big car, and there were three 
of them dead and one of them dying from 
the old rat who had squeezed through be¬ 
tween the porch floor and the house. 
Something about it; rats are terribly fond 
of young goslings and will risk almost 
anything to get them. 
Live With Them. —One thing the Par¬ 
son has learned more and more to realize, 
and that is, to raise young things like 
chickens or turkeys or goslings, you have 
to “live with them” when they are little. 
If the family or whoever cares for them 
has got to be away at all to speak of, 
there is no use trying to raise them, as 
they have got to be watched. It is like 
nursing a sick child. The water must be 
renewed, the dishes being thoroughly 
cleaned every little while. Never have 
people seemed to have so much trouble 
with chickens as this year; such poor 
hatches, and so many die. Some argue 
very strongly that the electric light bus¬ 
iness is sapping the vitality out of the 
whole poultry race. Others claim that 
they are going back to the old-time mon¬ 
grel hen, mixing together all the breeds 
they can find. This is probably unwise, 
but many seem to be desperate. It is dis¬ 
couraging. Here is a woman down coun¬ 
try who had the best success the first 
year they came out on the farm, eight 
years ago, and this after eight years’ ex¬ 
perience, they have the very worst time 
of all. They bought 400 day-old chicks, 
and they seem to have proven a very poor 
lot every way. The company has sent 
them 100 more free, but of what use are 
these if they are as poor as the others? 
And they seem to be. Can the incubator 
and the brooder, handling thousands at a 
time, maintain the vitality of the poultry 
species? It would seem to the Parson 
still to be a debatable question. 
The Market. —A market expert was 
saying the other day that the big city of 
Bridgeport has really been captured by 
the Middle West as an egg market, liais¬ 
ing large quantities of grain out there, 
they have a great deal of No. 2 stock to 
feed poultry at small cost. This man 
does not advise trying to raise more of 
your grain in Connecticut, small grains, 
but keeping more chickens so as to reduce 
the overhead per bird. But this would 
not apply to corn. The Parson is still 
preaching corn in New r England. We had 
a widow with three children down coun¬ 
try. Even with quite a mortgage and 
high taxes she got along for seven or 
eight years. Of course we all helped her 
out, what we could, and the neighbors 
did a lot. but last year was terribly dry 
and she let a lot of weeds grow in her 
corn, so as to pull them out for the cows, 
and then too she left far too many stalks 
in a hill, and all things acting the wrong 
way, she practically had no hard corn. It 
proved her undoing. With plenty of corn 
to last nearly the year round, and all out 
of doors for a run, her chickens had cost 
very little, and her eggs had paid her 
grocery and other bills. But when it 
came to buying grain, that ended the mat¬ 
ter. She could not do it. She used to 
sell a cow, and sometimes two each year, 
to pay her big bills. She has sold out 
and gone back to New York. 
Visiting Schools. —Here it is May 
12. and such a rainy spell as we have 
had here in Connecticut. It has lasted 
for five full days now, and is still pour¬ 
ing, though the weather man promises it 
will let up tomorrow. It is great for the 
grass crop, and the meadows are looking 
fine. Friday, in the pouring rain. George 
and the Parson started out to visit 
schools. We went down about 12 miles 
and pulled up at a one-room district 
school. It was a rainy, dark Friday, 
and they.all seemed glad enough to see 
us. The teacher gave us the time and the 
children all agreed to make it up at the 
noon hour. We set up the old stereopti- 
con lantern, and how much we did learn 
from those Bible pictures! Then we re 
viewed our last lesson, all about the 
Christmas story; then we had a lot of 
funny pictures. And the Parson gave out 
Sunday school papers for them to take 
home. Here we found the graphophone 
broken a id put it in the car to take to 
the city to have fixed. 
A Virginia Reel. —About four miles 
further on we stopped again, just at the 
noon hour. Here we put up the machine 
and had more Bible pictures, and went 
over our previous Bible lessons. Then 
the children went through their own folk 
dances, which were fine—a great thing 
to have phonographs in school! Then 
the Parson gave them a lesson on dancing 
the Virginia reel — right back of the 
teacher’s desk. Such a good time as we 
all had! The Parson stops there for 
Sunday school next Sunday in the after¬ 
noon. Do you suppose those children 
(and many more) will be apt to show 
up? The Parson left them a record to 
practice Virginia reel and quadrilles by. 
How it did rain, but we beat it some six 
or seven miles farther down on the back 
roads to make some calls and to deliver a 
bottle of horse medicine. 
Spring Goose. —We expect to start 
fresh in the goose business next Spring 
and look around and get a good white 
gander somewhere. We will eat up most 
of the old geese. We had one for over 
Sunday, and it certainly was fine. We 
just this minute finished it for dinner. 
We had baked potatoes that Fnele Clos- 
son sent down from Vermont. Mrs. Par¬ 
son, after washing them thoroughly, 
greased the skins in the way Mrs. Rorer 
talks about in her cook book. It is a 
great scheme. They do not cook hard 
and brittle and you eat the potato, skin 
and all. The Parson suggested cider, and 
all acclaimed in great enthusiasm. So 
Shelley got a two-quart jar of the sweet 
cider we put up last Fall—just as sweet 
and nice as the day it came from the 
mill. What with Mrs. Parson’s home¬ 
made bread and home-stirred butter and 
oilskin Green Mountain potatoes and cold 
roast goose with stuffing and sweet cider, 
it was the real thing, wasn’t it? 
Plowing in Rye. —Now the sun is 
coming out and the rain is over. George 
has gone to plow on that last year’s 
cornfield where we will plant corn again. 
The cover crop of rye is much larger than 
the Parson wishes it were. That is one 
of the worst things about rye as a cover 
for us—it is hard to get at it to plow it 
in when you are away so much as the 
Parson has to be. The land is ready io 
plant the potatoes, but the fertilizer, 
bought at a farmers’ exchange, has not 
come yet. The Parson has needed this 
fertilizer very much, like many others 
around here who ordered, and the matter 
is liable to give the exchange a black eye 
next year. The Parson also bought a ton 
of phosphorus to put on the corn land 
where there is considerable stable ma¬ 
nure. He will have to put in an extra 
amount of popcorn to have plenty to pop 
down on the old stove in the old church 
next Winter, after morning service and 
dinner. 
Warm for Once. —Speaking of stoves 
reminds the Parson of his recent trip to 
Vermont. It was just at the close of the 
sugar season and weather quite cold, 
freezing each night. They had been re¬ 
pairing and painting up the inside of the 
old Episcopal Church up there, and the 
painters had put up one stove right in 
the chancel—right up on the chancel plat¬ 
form. As a rule the minister always gets 
the cold end of a country church. The 
church officials sit around the cosy fire 
with their feet on the hearth, while the 
minister drags his ice-cold feet toward 
the pulpit. It was the identical same 
box stove that the Parson sat by for some 
15 years in the old home in Vermont— 
the same . “Kelly and Carter” on the 
hearth—-the first letters and the first 
words the five children of our family ever 
learned. The Parson filled her full of 
dry rock maple wood he found out in the 
sheds. How the old stove roared, and 
how the sparks flew out in front. A 
book of the things that had happened. 
tragic and comic, about that old stove 
could be written, but as the Parson began 
the “Dearly beloved” morning prayer of 
the prayer book, with this stove right in 
front of him, his eyes seemed ever to fall 
on the big round griddle of the top cover. 
For the whole top of this stove can be 
lifted up and rested against the stovepipe 
so that chunks the size ofthe stove can oe 
put in. How well the Parson could see 
father suddenly throw down the New 
York Sun and jump up and approach this 
stove, shouting loudly that “the whole 
family would sit right on top of a stove 
before they would put any wood in.” 
This remark's was wholly justified, as the 
stove would be encircled like a chicken 
dish of dry mash. 
Beware of the Griddle. —Now there 
used to be a small wedge-shaped iron you 
put in a slot in this top cover to raise 
it and lean it against the pipe. If left 
in, this “handle” got furiously hot, of 
course, which made it especially nice to 
take hold of. “Somebody” of course 
(other than father) had always left this 
iron in. It were well that by the time 
father had undertaken to lift the cover 
by this hot iron that we young ones had 
scattered to the four corners of the room, 
probably us boys feeling the need of an 
apple from the cellar just at that time. 
One or more times the whole cover would 
be dropped back to the stove on account 
of the heat of this handle. Finally, how- 
every, the big lid would be upright, lean¬ 
ing against the pipe, and right here two 
things would happen, both at the same 
time. Father would grab a huge poker 
and stir the fire with a vigor that would 
send forth a smoke screen into that din¬ 
ing and living room that would put an 
army bomber to shame. A Youngstown 
blast furnace in the big steel belt is the 
only thing the Parson has ever seen that 
could approach it. At this same mo¬ 
ment the big griddle would, about nine 
times out of 10, drop out of the big lid. 
First it would go down on the top of the 
stove with a terrible bang: Then off the 
stove it would come down onto the floor, 
with a still greater crash, and begin its 
winding, wobbling, tortuous, fiendish 
journey of terror. It always seemed to 
the Parson as a boy that that griddle or 
stove cover was possessed of superhuman 
intelligence and guided by seven devils, 
one for each member of the family, ex¬ 
cept father-—it never headed towards him. 
For father followed it as one might fol¬ 
low a hydra-headed dragon, with this 
same wedge-shaped iron handle he had 
grabbed out of the big “lid” or cover, still 
far too hot to carry in comTort or in si¬ 
lence ! At last the round cover would 
■topple over, most likely right under the 
big dining room table, with its flat sur¬ 
face down. Did you ever try to turn over 
a hot stove cover with a blunt iron under 
the table, with the smoke pouring out of 
the stove and the whole family coughing 
with near-suffocation? It were well and 
wise if by the time father had got that 
stove again put together some boy had a 
good likely chunk right handy and had 
already open the cellar door for old 
“Frol” and old “Spot.” who made believe 
about that time that they wanted to hunt 
black rats down in the north cellar. 
Whenever has the Parson enjoyed a ser¬ 
vice so much as he did that day, with the 
dear old family box stove right up in the 
chancel with him? 
George has just come into the house, 
chuckling like a young Spring woodchuck. 
“Gee, but Shelley is sore,” he says, and 
then he begins roaring with laughter. 
Y"ou see, Shelley’s old Ford racer has 
been overhauled, and the bearings are 
pretty tight, so they put old Jim onto her 
and dragged her up the hill to see if they 
could start her on the down grade. As 
they went to turn around they nosed the 
old car into the bar-way. In an old 
quarry across from this bar-way is where 
the farm refuse is thrown. As they hap¬ 
pened to head her in that direction, Susie, 
who works for a neighbor, came along. 
“Are you taking it to the dump?” said 
she. Goodness! That beautiful, yellow- 
painted, black-striped. home-modeled, 
stream-lined, low-seated, high-footed, de- 
mountable-rimmed, spare-tired Ford of 
his! “Are you taking it to the dump?” 
said she. And Shelley is still rather puz¬ 
zling if she didn’t really mean it, after 
all. 
Seats Full. —Yesterday the Parson 
preached over at Storrs College. Shelley 
sings in a choir in the city every Sunday, 
so lie could not go. The rest of us went 
over in the big car. It has seven seats; 
seven in the family and one gone, and 
seven seats all filled. No company in the 
house, no relation in sight, and yet seven 
in the car. It made Mr. and Mrs. Par- 
eon feel a bit old. it did, and yet not 
sorry in any way. For the seventh pas¬ 
senger was on the front seat with George, 
who was driving, and she was not a boy 
chum, either. It was the first such trip, 
but quite likely not the last, with four 
boys coming on. 
The bus wae making its early morning 
trip to connect with the train on a branch 
line in Mississippi. It was filled with 
half-awake passengers, with the excep¬ 
tion of one very talkative traveling sales¬ 
man Failing to start the usual conver¬ 
sation, he turned to the negro driver. 
“Sambo.” he said, “why in thunder did 
they put this station so far from the 
town?” “Don’t know, boss,” said the 
sleepy negro, “ ’cep’in’ it is dey wants it 
on de railroad.”—Everybody’s Magazine. 
They tell us there are not many real farmers left in Massachusetts—well, here are 
a few being trained for the future! 
