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