farm life. How much soever we may admire machinery and the faculty
of mechanical invention, there is no machine like a man; and the
work done directly by his hands, the things made or fashioned by
them, have a virtue and a quality that cannot be imparted by
machinery. The line of mowers in the meadows, with the straight
swaths behind them, is more picturesque than the "Clipper" or
"Buckeye" mower, with its team and driver. So are the flails of the
threshers, chasing each other through the air, more pleasing to the
eye and the ear than the machine, with its uproar, its choking
clouds of dust, and its general hurly-burly.

Sometimes the threshing was done in the open air, upon a broad rock,
or a smooth, dry plat of greensward; and it is occasionally done
there yet, especially the threshing of the buckwheat crop, by a
farmer who has not a good barn floor, or who cannot afford to hire
the machine. The flail makes a louder _thud_ in the fields than you
would imagine; and in the splendid October weather it is a pleasing
spectacle to behold the gathering of the ruddy crop, and three or
four lithe figures beating out the grain with their flails in some
sheltered nook, or some grassy lane lined with cedars. When there
are three flails beating together, it makes lively music; and when
there are four, they follow each other so fast that it is a
continuous roll of sound, and it requires a very steady stroke not
to hit or get hit by the others. There is just room and time to get
your blow in, and that is all. When one flail is upon the straw,
another has just left it, another is halfway down, and the fourth is
high and straight in the air. It is like a swiftly revolving wheel
that delivers four blows at each revolution. Threshing, like mowing,
goes much easier in company than when alone; yet many a farmer or
laborer spends nearly all the late fall and winter days shut in the