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!"