position; and in order to be first they will injure their neighbors by telling stories about them and by backbiting, which is the meanest kind of biting there is, not excepting the bite of fleas.  But in cow society there is nothing of this detraction in order to get the first place at the crib, or the farther stall in the stable.  If the question arises, the cows turn in, horns and all, and settle it with one square fight, and that ends it.  I have often admired this trait in cows.

Besides Latin, I used to try to teach the cows a little poetry, and it is a very good plan.  It does not do the cows much good, but it is very good exercise for a boy farmer.  I used to commit to memory as good 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.”