“Say, father, can’t I go over to the farther pasture and salt the cattle?” John knows that he could spend half a day very pleasantly in going over to that pasture, looking for bird’s nests and shying at red squirrels on the way, and who knows but he might “see” a sucker in the meadow brook, and perhaps get a “jab” at him with a sharp stick.  He knows a hole where there is a whopper; and one of his plans in life is to go some day and snare him, and bring him home in triumph.  It is therefore strongly impressed upon his mind that the cattle want salting.  But his father, without turning his head, replies,

“No, they don’t need salting any more ’n you do!” And the old equipage goes rattling down the road, and John whistles his disappointment.  When I was a boy on a farm, and I suppose it is so now, cattle were never salted half enough!

John goes to his chores, and gets through the stable as soon as he can, for that must be done; but when it comes to the out-door work, that rather drags.  There are so many things to distract the attention—­a chipmunk in the fence, a bird on a near-tree, and a hen-hawk circling high in the air over the barnyard.  John loses a little time in stoning the chipmunk, which rather likes the sport, and in watching the bird, to find where its nest is; and he convinces himself that he ought to watch the hawk, lest it pounce upon the chickens, and therefore, with an easy conscience, he spends fifteen minutes in hallooing to that distant bird, and follows it away out of sight over the woods, and then wishes it would come back again.  And then a carriage with two horses, and a trunk on behind, goes along the road; and there is a girl in the carriage who looks out at John, who is suddenly aware that his trousers are patched on each knee and in two places behind; and he wonders if she is rich, and whose name is on the trunk, and how much the horses cost, and whether that nice-looking man is the girl’s father, and if that boy on the seat with the driver is her brother, and if he has to do chores; and as the gay sight disappears, John falls to thinking about the great world beyond the farm, of cities, and people who are always dressed up, and a great many other things of which he has a very dim notion.  And then a boy, whom John knows, rides by in a wagon with his father, and the boy makes a face at John, and John returns the greeting with a twist of his own visage and some symbolic gestures.  All these things take time.  The work of cutting down the big weeds gets on slowly, although it is not very disagreeable, or would not be if it were play.  John imagines that yonder big thistle is some whiskered villain, of whom he has read in a fairy book, and he advances on him with “Die, ruffian!” and slashes off his head with the bill-hook; or he charges upon the rows of mullein-stalks as if they were rebels in regimental ranks, and hews them down without mercy.  What fun it might be if there were only another boy there to help.  But even war, single handed, gets to be tiresome.  It is dinner-time before John finishes the weeds, and it is cow-time before John has made much impression on the garden.