Or die for you were vain.--
And so, speed on! the while I pray
All nipping frosts forsake you--
Ride still ahead of grief, but may
All glad things overtake you!

Her Tired Hands

[Illustration]

On board a western train the other day I held in my bosom for over
seventy-five miles the elbow of a large man whose name I do not know. He
was not a railroad hog or I would have resented it. He was built wide
and he couldn't help it, so I forgave him.

He had a large, gentle, kindly eye, and when he desired to spit, he went
to the car door, opened it and decorated the entire outside of the
train, forgetting that our speed would help to give scope to his
remarks.

[Illustration]

Naturally as he sat there by my side, holding on tightly to his ticket
and evidently afraid that the conductor would forget to come and get it,
I began to figure out in my mind what might be his business. He had
pounded one thumb so that the nail was black where the blood had settled
under it. This might happen to a shoemaker, a carpenter, a blacksmith or
most anyone else. So it didn't help me out much, though it looked to me
as though it might have been done by trying to drive a fence-nail
through a leather hinge with the back of an axe, and nobody but a farmer
would try to do that. Following up the clue, I discovered that he had
milked on his boots and then I knew I was right. The man who milks
before daylight, in a dark barn, when the thermometer is down to 28
degrees below and who hits his boot and misses the pail, by reason of
the cold and the uncertain light and the prudishness of the cow, is a
marked man. He cannot conceal the fact that he is a farmer unless he
removes that badge. So I started out on that theory and remarked that
this would pass for a pretty hard winter on stock.

[Illustration]

The thought was not original with me, for I have heard it expressed by
others either in this country or Europe. He said it would.

"My cattle has gone through a whole mowful o' hay sence October and
eleven ton o' brand. Hay don't seem to have the goodness to it thet it
hed last year, and with their new _pro_-cess griss mills they jerk all
the juice out o' brand, so's you might as well feed cows with excelsior
and upholster your horses with hemlock bark as to buy brand."

"Well, why do you run so much to stock? Why don't you try diversified
farming, and rotation of crops?"

"Well, probably you got that idee