The Complete Writings, vol 4 | Page 5

stories about them and by backbiting, which is the
meanest kind of biting there is, not excepting the bite of fleas. But in
cow society there is nothing of this detraction in order to get the first
place at the crib, or the farther stall in the stable. If the question arises,
the cows turn in, horns and all, and settle it with one square fight, and
that ends it. I have often admired this trait in COWS.
Besides Latin, I used to try to teach the cows a little poetry, and it is a
very good plan. It does not do the cows much good, but it is very good

exercise for a boy farmer. I used to commit to memory as good short
poems as I could find (the cows liked to listen to "Thanatopsis" about
as well as anything), and repeat them when I went to the pasture, and as
I drove the cows home through the sweet ferns and down the rocky
slopes. It improves a boy's elocution a great deal more than driving
oxen.
It is a fact, also, that if a boy repeats "Thanatopsis" while he is milking,
that operation acquires a certain dignity.

II
THE BOY AS A FARMER
Boys in general would be very good farmers if the current notions
about farming were not so very different from those they entertain.
What passes for laziness is very often an unwillingness to farm in a
particular way. For instance, some morning in early summer John is
told to catch the sorrel mare, harness her into the spring wagon, and put
in the buffalo and the best whip, for father is obliged to drive over to
the "Corners, to see a man" about some cattle, to talk with the road
commissioner, to go to the store for the "women folks," and to attend to
other important business; and very likely he will not be back till
sundown. It must be very pressing business, for the old gentleman
drives off in this way somewhere almost every pleasant day, and
appears to have a great deal on his mind.
Meantime, he tells John that he can play ball after he has done up the
chores. As if the chores could ever be "done up" on a farm. He is first
to clean out the horse-stable; then to take a bill-hook and cut down the
thistles and weeds from the fence corners in the home mowing-lot and
along the road towards the village; to dig up the docks round the garden
patch; to weed out the beet-bed; to hoe the early potatoes; to rake the
sticks and leaves out of the front yard; in short, there is work enough
laid out for John to keep him busy, it seems to him, till he comes of age;
and at half an hour to sundown he is to go for the cows "and mind he
don't run 'em!"
"Yes, sir," says John," is that all?"
"Well, if you get through in good season, you might pick over those
potatoes in the cellar; they are sprouting; they ain't fit to eat."
John is obliged to his father, for if there is any sort of chore more

cheerful to a boy than another, on a pleasant day, it is rubbing the
sprouts off potatoes in a dark cellar. And the old gentleman mounts his
wagon and drives away down the enticing road, with the dog bounding
along beside the wagon, and refusing to come back at John's call. John
half wishes he were the dog. The dog knows the part of farming that
suits him. He likes to run along the road and see all the dogs and other
people, and he likes best of all to lie on the store steps at the
Corners--while his master's horse is dozing at the post and his master is
talking politics in the store--with the other dogs of his acquaintance,
snapping at mutually annoying flies, and indulging in that delightful
dog gossip which is expressed by a wag of the tail and a sniff of the
nose. Nobody knows how many dogs' characters are destroyed in this
gossip, or how a dog may be able to insinuate suspicion by a wag of the
tail as a man can by a shrug of the shoulders, or sniff a slander as a man
can suggest one by raising his eyebrows.
John looks after the old gentleman driving off in state, with the odorous
buffalo-robe and the new whip, and he thinks that is the sort of farming
he would like to do. And he cries after his departing parent,
"Say, father, can't I go over to the farther pasture and salt the cattle?"
John knows that he could spend half a day very pleasantly in going