1050 
Iht RURAL NEW-YORKER 
August 2, 11)24 
Hope Farm Notes 
THE GLORIOUS FOURTH 
Part III. 
But what business has a farmer to 
think of such things? Why doesn’t he 
put his mind on his work? That’s where 
it belongs. Well, there may be no ap¬ 
parent connection between these old his¬ 
torical scenes and hoeing strawberries, 
but I know that I can kill more weeds 
and view life with greater philosophy if 
somehow I can connect these humble 
things of the present with the brave old 
deeds of long ago. Let the filing of a 
hoe bring back the things that are filed 
away in memory! This sharp hoe works 
like a good razor—but here come the 
three raiders again on some new foray. 
Rose is the important member of this 
delegation. She can write well enough to 
communicate, while Rita can only grin 
and make gestures with her hands, while 
Camille stamps on the ground with im¬ 
patience. So I give Rose a pencil and 
an old envelope and she writes out her 
communication—a very important little 
chairman. It seems we have an order for 
strawberries and they also want four 
quarts for dinner. The boys are busy 
with the hay—and they want the after¬ 
noon for a less laborious celebration. 
Philip is working in the garden. So 
“Will you please pick berries?” 
Now, I suppose most men have dreamed 
of the time when some important delega¬ 
tion should appear to say that “in view 
of your distinguished services to human¬ 
ity we come to offer you the nomination 
for this most important office.” 
We all know how we have in imagina¬ 
tion cleared our throats and replied : 
“Gentlemen, I thank you for this great 
honor. I do not deserve it, but since it 
comes as the unanimous desire of my 
fellow citizens, I am willing to sacrifice 
my own feelings and accept.” 
It may be considered somewhat of a 
dubious honor to be selected as straw¬ 
berry nicker on a day like this, but I 
know where to find a bunch of Marshall 
plants where the berries run as large as 
Astrachan apples. So I drop my hoe, 
and with Camille on my back and Rose 
and Rita each holding a hand we make 
our way back to the house for the new 
job. 
* *• * * 
It is about 12 o’clock by standard time, 
and the sun is beating down upon us as 
it did at the battle of Monmouth. When 
I pick berries for a superior trade I get 
right down on my knees and crawl along 
the row. These big, thick plants try to 
hide their fruit, and the bigger the ber¬ 
ries the more they seem to crawl into 
the shade. It doesn’t take many of these 
big fellows to fill a quart—I am picking 
into a niilk pan and almost before I 
know it this pan is heaping full. That 
will do for our folks, and the neighbor 
wants a few quarts for ice cream. By 
the time I get my pan of berries to the 
house dinner is about ready, but I shall 
have a little time for reading while the 
girls are fixing these berries. At first 
they expected to have a short cake, but 
very properly we decide to eat them raw. 
My book today is “Senescence,” by G. 
Stanly Hall. It is a long and elaborate 
discussion of the last half of life. Hall 
has gathered in this big volume a most 
remarkable collection of fact and opinion 
about old age and what it means. Him¬ 
self an old man with a superior brain 
Hall gives us the psychology of old age 
as it has never been presented before. 
There are some who think that one should 
never consider wliat advancing years 
may bring to life. I do not agree with 
that idea. I think a fair and reasonable 
study of the condition which all of us 
who "live on must expect will help us to 
meet it with philosophy. Hall tells of a 
parrot reported to be so old that it spoke 
a language or dialect which most men 
had forgotten. I confess that I have met 
people who seemed to live nearly as far 
back in the years. He also says the 
goose quite frequently lives to be 100 
years old. But here is the call for din¬ 
ner, and I can assure you these two 
geese we have today have never reached 
that age. There they are, brown and 
tender and fragrant as Mother cuts them 
up. You would surely call this a very 
glorious day if you could have a couple 
of slices of that brown breast meat, a 
share of that dressing and some of that 
southern gravy. Then let me help you 
to potato, green peas, asparagus and some 
of this soft boiled turnip. There are 
15 human mouths on the farm today, 
and they will all be filled. Have more 
of the goose. Plenty of it—but you must 
keep a little storage space for those 
strawberries. Like the last rose of Sum¬ 
mer. a belated Marshall is best of all, 
and you must reserve room for a pint of 
them at least. Then if you like we can 
give you a piece of cherry pie. One of 
the girls made it—as you know, making a 
good pie of sour cherries is about the 
highest type of the housewife’s art. Cher¬ 
ry picking will start on Monday, and 
we shall have close to 100 crates to get 
off. It is a hard and monotonous job. 
After the second day you feel acid and 
see red. The boys have the pickers en¬ 
gaged, and they will stack in on a little 
pleasure this afternoon to carry them 
through the job. Our little girls have a 
very deep stain of red around the lips. 
They have been using sour cherries as 
lipsticks. Each reaches out for an extra 
glass of milk. You might not think it, 
but as the milk drains down into those 
little red-«tained tunnels, I have to think 
of the walls of Jericho and the way they 
fell. It was so close to 60 years ago 
that I do not like to figure dates too close¬ 
ly that the new minister came to our 
house for dinner on the “Glorious 
Fourth.” He was a young man, liberal 
enough to act as though there was some 
rubber in the seams of the “cloth.” Be¬ 
fore dinner he climbed our sour cherry 
tree and ate his fill of cherries. At din¬ 
ner my aunt asked him if he would have 
some coffee, but he was wise and said he 
would take a glass of milk. He proceeded 
to drink some of it, to the great horror of 
my aunt. 
“Why,” she said, “you’ll die! Cherries 
and milk are pi’sen ! Stop him !” 
But the minister proceeded to drink his 
milk. He only smiled. My aunt jumped 
from the table and got together her outfit 
of household remedies—mustard, catnip, 
sulphur, “blue mass” and arnica. She 
tried to make the minister swallow a doee 
of warm water and mustard, but he just 
smiled and went on drinking milk. And 
nothing happened ! He was not “p’isened” 
or 'hurt in any way. His sermon the fol¬ 
lowing Sunday was the best he had ever 
preached. In those days I had to come 
home from church and write at least 10 
lines about the sermon before I could 
have any dinner—so I know about that. 
The minister’s text was the Bible story 
of the walls of Jericho and how they were 
thrown down. He spoke of prejudice and 
old, false beliefs which were rooted in the 
human mind and could not be destroyed 
until the shell or walls could be thrown 
down by faith and intelligence. I know 
that on our way home my uncle spoke up: 
“A very enlightening sermon, Mrs. 
Reed.” And my aunt replied : 
“It was. Maybe milk and cherries ain’t 
always p’isen, after all.” 
I suppose we all (or at least part of 
us) live within the walls of Jericho; 
something like a clam inside its shell un¬ 
til the hosts of faith and intelligence blow 
down the battlements. The 'trouble is that 
most of our politicians and so-called lead¬ 
ers try to do the trick with “hot air” in¬ 
stead of bravely sustained faith. 
* * * * * 
“What are you going to do this after¬ 
noon?” the boys ask as they clean up the 
last of the berries. 
“Hoe strawberries, of course! There 
is room for volunteers!” 
But I do not see any volunteers. My 
folks may admire my pluck but they 
evidently think little of my judgment. 
One of the boys will cultivate mental 
vitamines at a ball game. The other will 
finish cutting the grass and then play 
golf. 
It seems to me that the golf player 
ought to be a good man with a hoe, for 
the swings and pokes he practices ought 
to make him invaluable at fighting weeds. 
The only golf I ever played was years ago 
when I was sent out into the pasture with 
a club to smash up the hard lumps of ma¬ 
nure and scatter them evenly over the 
surface! You might call that useful golf! 
It is not ornamental enough for our mod¬ 
ern young people. I often wonder if 
these modern golf players can put the 
imagination into their mighty swings 
which the chunky little boy in that lone¬ 
ly pasture worked out as he swung his 
club. What home runs I made in imag¬ 
ination as I knocked that manure into 
fine pieces. At that time “Babe” Ruth, 
the modern baseball hero, had not ap¬ 
peared in the world. Our great ideal in 
'baseball was Harry Wright, who played 
center field in the Boston nine. He wore 
a beard nearly a foot long, and it was 
said of him that “he never dropped a 
ball if he got any part of his hands on 
it.” Then there was A1 Spaulding, Jim 
White, A1 Gedney, Ross Barns and George 
Wright. Old-timers will remember them, 
and I personated all of them as I pounded 
those pasture clumps apart. Or I would 
imagine myself as “Horatius at the 
Bridge ,” 1 scattering the brains of the 
Etruscans as they tried to get at him. I 
recited Macaulay’s poem in school (what 
old-timer has not done that?) and as I 
swung that club I was back in Rome at 
the Subliciau bridge knocking the enemy 
into fragments. The other day I read an 
elaborate statement which seems to prove 
that this brave old story is a myth. They 
now say that Horatius had only one eye 
and that he never did play bridge as the 
poet has him doing. I am glad I did not 
know that while I played that useful pas¬ 
ture golf. It would have taken most of 
the joy out of it, and golf without joy 
would be that most unprofitable thing— 
labor without soul. My boy claims that 
golf will be the great national game of 
the future; baseball, he thinks, will be 
more and more a professional occupation. 
My idea is that baseball has had much to 
do with the development of our sturdy 
American characters. Can we develop as 
strong and courageous an American out 
of golf? He will be a different type of 
man—perhaps better suited to the needs 
of the future—for that will no longer be 
a pioneer age. Not long ago a group of 
(Continued on page 1057) 
Write for interesting Booklet 
BOGGS MANUFACTURING CORP. 
42 Main Street, Atlanta, N. Y. 
Factories: Atlanta, N. Y. — Detroit, Minn. 
Accurate grading is impossible unless the belt of the grader 
is of proper design and construction. 
The Boggs belt-within-a-belt is the only belt that will grade 
up to four sizes accurately and without injuring or bruising the 
potatoes. It permits either round or long potatoes to be sorted 
and graded into No. 1 and No. 2 sizes, with less than 3% vari¬ 
ation in size from Government grades. No other grader can 
use this belt, as we hold basic patents thereon. 
The Boggs belt has an opening as near round as it is possible 
to get and still cover the whole surface of belt. With a square 
or diamond shaped opening, a large potato will drop through 
into the No. 2’s if placed diagonally; or if placed sidewise of the open¬ 
ing, a much smaller potato will ride over into the No. l’s. This is not 
possible with the Boggs belt. No matter how potatoes strike 
they will be graded accurately. 
REASON NO. 6 
Fire protection ! Running water 
is the great security and protection 
against the ever-menacing peril of 
fire. The proper equipment reduces 
insurance rates also. 
The WILLSEA AUTOMATIC 
WATER SYSTEM supplies running 
water wherever you want it, without 
any attention, tinkering or fussing. 
It is silent, dependable, entirely 
automatic and very economical— 
upkeep less than the cost of city 
water. THE WILLSEA AUTO¬ 
MATIC WATER SYSTEM is built 
of the highest quality, to give effic¬ 
ient service and lasting satisfaction. 
If your local dealer cannot give you the information, write us 
THE WILLSEA WORKS 
ROCHESTER, N. Y. 
UERCULES 
** Dynamite is an 
ideal explosive for 
clearing your land. 
It does the work 
quickly, easily and 
economically. 
HERCULES POWDER OO. 
904 Market Street 
Wilmington Delaware 
a HERCULES 
l POWBEJt 
\ HERCULES 
6 POWDER 
HERCULES 
DYNAMITE 
Usol Skeeto Skare 
For the dairyman — Flies and mosquitos 
will not pester you during milking if you 
apply a few drops to hands, neck and face. 
Harmless. Pleasant odor. 
Sold in two-ounce bottles. 
If your dealer cannt 
Usol Fly Spray 
The wonder spray — keeps cows and 
horses contented from sunrise to sunset. 
Will not blister, gum up or discolor the hair. 
Sweet and pleasant odor. Sold in 55, 35, 5-gal¬ 
lon drums and 1 gallon cans. 
supply you, zvrite us 
Standard Tar Products Co., Foot ot Chestnut Street, Milwaukee, Wis. 
