amount of
work done on the farm and our national freedom. I doubted if there could
be any Fourth of July if my stent was not done. I, at least, worked for
my Independence.

III. THE DELIGHTS OF FARMING

There are so many bright spots in the life of a farm-boy, that I
sometimes think I should like to live the life over again; I should
almost be willing to be a girl if it were not for the chores. There is a
great comfort to a boy in the amount of work he can get rid of doing. It
is sometimes astonishing how slow he can go on an errand,--he who leads
the school in a race. The world is new and interesting to him, and there
is so much to take his attention off, when he is sent to do anything.
Perhaps he himself couldn't explain why, when he is sent to the
neighbor's after yeast, he stops to stone the frogs; he is not exactly
cruel, but he wants to see if he can hit 'em. No other living thing can
go so slow as a boy sent on an errand. His legs seem to be lead, unless
he happens to espy a woodchuck in an adjoining lot, when he gives chase
to it like a deer; and it is a curious fact about boys, that two will
be a great deal slower in doing anything than one, and that the more you
have to help on a piece of work the less is accomplished. Boys have
a great power of helping each other to do nothing; and they are so
innocent about it, and unconscious. "I went as quick as ever I could,"
says the boy: his father asks him why he did n't stay all night, when he
has been absent three hours on a ten-minute errand. The sarcasm has no
effect on the boy.

Going after the cows was a serious thing in my day. I had to climb a
hill, which was covered with wild strawberries in the season. Could any
boy pass by those ripe berries? And then in the fragrant hill pasture
there were beds of wintergreen with red berries, tufts of columbine,
roots of sassafras to be dug, and dozens of things good to eat or to
smell, that I could not resist. It sometimes even lay in my way to climb
a tree to look for a crow's nest, or to swing in the top, and to try if
I could see the steeple of the village church. It became very
important sometimes for me to see that steeple; and in the midst of my
investigations the tin horn would blow a great blast from the farmhouse,
which would send a cold chill down my back in the hottest days. I knew
what it meant. It had a frightfully impatient quaver in it, not at all
like the sweet note that called us to dinner from