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CONNECTICUT GEORGICS.

"FARMED it” two summers, when I was eleven and twelve years old. I had been brought up within a paved city; was lean, white, slender, school-worn, bookish. Analyzing now the phases of interior life which I only experienced then, I seem to have been impregnated with city associations; or rather the boy's soul in me was paved over with brick and stone, like the walls whose hot reflections smote my eyes in summer, and girded me in always. I can remember how I shed a shrunken epidermis, as it were, like a moulting crab, as if I really grew inwardly by the fresh fulness of the country. I found that, besides the side of human life on which I had theretofore been gazing; dry and scaly with brick and stone, dead and still on Sundays, dinning and resounding all the week with the clash of pavements under armed heel and hoof, with rattle and groan of wheels-the unrelenting and desperate onwardness of the great Yankee dollar-chase ;-that, besides this, there was another-infinite, calm, peaceful, sun-lighted, dewy, free, full of life, unconstrained, fresh, vigorous-the world of God; as the city is the world of menand of devils.

I was to enter upon my agricultural novitiate under the tutorship of an uncle, a farmer near the south shore of Connecticut. I departed for my destination early one morning in the end of Spring, from my city home in the interior of the State, riding in the wagon of a certain landholder from my uncle's vicinity, who had come thither on business in his private conveyance. All the day I rode southward, through town and village, wood and field, in the absorbing trance of deep delight which a child enjoys in any discursive or adventurous enterprise, however humble. Every thing was enjoyable. The steady, binary progression of the old farm-horse's persistent trot; the rattling of the bones of the hard-seated and springless wagon; the boundless woods, full of new forms and colors, on rocks, branches and leaves; sprinkled on surface, and permeated through unfathomable depths, with sparkling specks of sunlight; the occasional chip squirrel, provincially called "chipmunk," jerking or gliding along the fences; sometimes a "very magnificent threetailed bashaw"-a red or gray compeer of the rodent tribe-a beast which I was almost as much surprised to see, at least outside of a rotatory tin gymnasium, as if he had been a giraffe or an ornithorhyn

chus; the wide, open fields, with their "industrial regiments" on active service, in undress uniform; the twisting and writhing trout-brooks; the quiet and composed rivers; the steep hills, and deep, still ponds, of each of which the neighbors aver with pride that the bottom has never been found—a fact, perhaps, to be accounted for by its never having been considered worth looking after;-all were new, all overflowing with light, and life. and joy.

I was startled at being vanquished by my companion in a strife, with whose wea pons I had presumed him unacquainted. I began to "tell stories," and at first acquitted myself to my satisfaction; but soon I found that I had met my match. Mr. N.'s talents as a raconteur were infinitely above my own. Not only were his stories funnier than mine, but whenever I boggled, he kindly suggested the missing matter; and when I did not boggle, he invariably furnished an improved catastrophe.

We stopped to dine at the house of a farmer. And then and there-with shame I tell it-did I first feel the excitement of the intoxicating cup. That excitement, however, did not in the present instance exhibit itself in the gorgeous colors poetically supposed to clothe it. The flowing bowl was represented, upon the pine "mahogany" of our Connecticut Amphitryon, by a broken-nosed earthen pitcher: and the mighty wine, by equally mighty cider, of so hard a texture that our host stated that it could only with great difficulty be bitten off by the partaker, at the end of his draught. Of this seductive fluid I drank two tumblers-full; and to me, unconscious and verdant, it tasted good, as sour things are wont to do to children. But a quick retribution came upon me. The puckery stuff began to bite like a serpent, and sting like an adder, with a promptitude not adverted to by Solomon.

We came safe to our journey's end; arriving, as the evening fell, at the farmstead, my summer home. Darkness was already gathering among the thick shadowing of great elms and prim locusts in the wide dooryard. Piles of saw-mill slabs fortified the woodpile, which, paved with chips, the mangled remains of slaughtered King Log, spread before the " "stoop"; a façade of lofty barns-the "old barn and the (6 new were ranged across the background in the north, shel

tering the lane, into which we had driven, and which, leaving woodpile and stoop to the east, led northward to the abutting front of the two barnyards. A woodshed, opening to the south, ran out from the house, displaying, within, a vast and miscellaneous concourse of firewood, lumber, tools, and all the mechanico-agricultural apparatus of a farmer's tinkering shop. Entering the house, after greeting due, and a proper refection for my inner boy, I was speedily asleep; and, next morning early, was enrolled in the ranks of industry, and detailed for skirmishing and outpost service: in other words, I was promoted to the captaincy over a platoon of "milky mothers," whose daily march to and from near and distant pastures I was to guard and guide. By appropriate degrees, I was led deeper and deeper within the agricultural mysteries of planting and hoeing, and the aftercoming work of haying and harvest.

Perhaps descriptions of a few separate days' experience will best portray what manner of life I led.

THE FRESH MEADOW.

WITH empty cart and full dinner-pails, we set out early for the assault upon the June grass. The "fresh meadow was a level intervale, the road to which ran through a large upland mowing lot, descended through a secret chasm in a ledge of rocks crowned with trees, and led us out into the open sunny meadow behind, like the downward paths by which princes in fairy tales descend into realms of underground loveliness, ruled by expectant queens.

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In such expeditions I took my first lessons in the ox-compelling art. The mys teries of "haw" and gee," of "hwo" and "hwish"-the last an outlandish Vermontese barbarism, signifying "back," were duly explained. The cartwhip exercise was demonstrated; whose adaptation to the intellectual capacities of the bovine race is marked by the simplicity of genius. For the single lesson taught the ox appeals with metaphysical truth to the desire of happiness common to beasts with men ; and with practical wisdom developes in a utilitarian direction his natural instinct to get away from what hurts him. If, therefore, I wish him to go forward, I "flick " him à posteriori; if I would have him retrogress. I pound his nose with the whipstock; if he should come towards me, I touch him up on the further side with the lash, and if he should go from me, I prod his hither ribs with the butt. These ma

nœuvres having been accompanied with dexterous intonations of the four aforesaid sounds, together with "go 'lang!" ". !" "what are ye 'ba-a-a-ut?" and other interjections hortatory, mandatory, and sometimes, I grieve to say, imprecatory, all developed by skilful teamsters into many wonderful, intricate, and imaginative variations executed through the nose, the intelligent beast gradually learns to do, at the sound alone, what he did at first, at the sound accompanied with action. Some imagine that herein is the true solution of the myth of Amphion's song, viz.: He played -a Greek prototype of the great Italian fiddler-a pagan Paganini-upon a onestringed λEKTрov, plectrum, or whip (comp. plago, plagare, to scourge), which he accompanied with the voice, probaby in the Lydian mode; and as he worked powerfully upon the feelings of his cattle, by his vigorous instrumental performance, executed fortissimo, forestissimo, sforzando, and confuoco molto, so, when he performed as vocal solos these impassioned variations upon one string, the vivid recollections of his masterly instrumentation induced his cattle to manoeuvre with such remakable agility, as to give rise to the present slightly varied account, that he played to the beasts, instead of on them. This, however, is a digression, for which, now that I have followed it out to my satisfaction, I ask pardon.

Theory such as I have adverted to was imparted to me; and very soon I flourished the pliant hickory, and bawled out the scientific monosyllables with a nasality as easy and workmanlike as that of any Bill or Joe, to the manner born.

The meadow is entered; the cart left in a corner, resting on its wheels and long nose, like that Australian bird who locates himself, for his ease, tripodwise upon his two legs and his bill; the dinner-pails are sheltered in its shadow; scythes are hung and whetted, and "forward four." The best man goes foremost; and the strongbacked scythemen, each with "rifle" whetstone in his red right hand, girded low and tight, stepping wide and bending forward, seem to gesture the falling grass into the long straight swaths which grow close under and after the left hand of each.

"And forward, and forward,
Resistlessly they go;

For strong arms wave the long keen glaive
That vibrates down below."

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Is any thing more inspiriting than the "rhythmic sweep" of a platoon of mowers? They seem to beat the time to some mysterious marching music. Strength is

The

magnificently shown; no labor will better test the thews and sinews of a man. same indescribable joy arises from the simultaneous steady movement that pulsates out from the heavy tread of marching men, and the symmetrical involutions of a hall of dancers. And there is rapid and continual progress. Abundant conditions of excitement are in the operations of a band of mowers. If strength, action, rhythm, simultaneity, and success, in concrete and vivid presentation, will not stir pulses of deep pleasure in a man's soul, he should be kicked out of decent society as an undoubted treasoner and incendiary, or sent to the School for the Training and Teaching of Idiots, as a pitiable instance of that anticlimax of mental negation whose two higher degrees are (see Dr. S. G. Howe's Reports) simpleton and foolas a fully undeveloped idiot.

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Away go the mowers, halfway round the field; and now they stand erect, and the ringing reduplicating clash of the whetstones comes back upon their steps. But I too must perform my office. With ardor I inquire, like the revolutionary orator, Why stand we here idle?" and with a 'peaked stick" I descend in fury upon the slain. The red-top and daisies are tossed abroad upon the four winds; and with an ennobling consciousness of power, and working out certain dim conceptions of a grand military march, by brandishing my stick in unison with the alternation of advancing steps, I sweep up and down the field in a centrifugacious halo of scattered gramineæ, feeling, as nearly as I can judge, very much like a cyclone.

But over what tremendous volcanoes of thinly covered agonies and horrid throes of pain are all hollow human exultations enacted! In the midst of my stormful march, a frightful dart of Eblis, a sharp sudden stroke, precipitated as by diabolical propulsion from some far distant sphere of malignant wrath, smites me full upon the forehead. A shrieking diphthongal OU! and a lofty entrechat are the involuntary introductories of my debut as "Le danseur malgré lui." Several millions of minute yellow devils, with black stripes and a "voice and hideous hum," stimulate me into an inconceivably rapid and intricate war-dance, accompanied by a solo obligato upon the human voice. I have, in short, trodden upon a yellow hornets' nest. The Briarean evolutions of my hands knock off my hat. An enterprising "bird" forthwith ensconces himself among my locks, and proceeds to harpoon me at his leisure. I seem to scrub out every hair, such is the promptitude and velocity

of the friction which I apply. But I despair of maintaining my position, the enemy having made a lodgment within the citadel. I run as nobody ever ran before, and suddenly turn and flee at a sharp angle to my first course, in order that the momentum of my foes may throw them off my track. But they turn as quickly as I, sticking much closer than either a friend or a brother would do. I see the brook before me, I go headforemost, splash! into a deep hole, where I stumble, fall, choke, and am picked out by the mowers, who are nearly helpless with laughter. I have swallowed several quarts of warm brookwater, screeched until I cannot whisper, expended more strength and breath than it seems possible that I should ever recover; have endured and am enduring more pain than ten hydrophobiacs; and with one eye fast shut and swelled into a hard red lump of agony, and sundry abnormal "organs" extemporizing cranial evidence of a most unsymmetrical character, I lie helpless, blind, sopping, and sobbing in a swath of fresh, cool, green grass, until time, salt, and plantain leaves assuage most of the pain. I know what hornets are, at least in their foreign relations; but the single item of knowledge is no equivalent for the difficulties under which it was pursued. What fiends they are! Did the Inquisition ever try hornets on any particularly refractory captive ?

Soon comes the dinner time, indicated to the observant farmers, by the proportions of shadow and sunlight, upon the roof of a certain barn. We made a nest in bushes and long grass, within the shadow of great trees, and squatted Turk-like around a service of tin crockery, brown paper and bark, whereon were displayed salt beef, cold boiled potatoes, bread and butter, and a specimen of rye gingerbread, which, for weight and tenacity, might be a mass of native copper, from Lake Superior. The food disappears rapidly, under the direction of jack-knives and one-pronged forks, whittled from sticks. The jug clucks and chuckles to the affectionate kisses of the thirsty workmen, and much refreshed, they take a short "nooning" to tell stories, gossip or sleep, and go to work again.

Haymakers cure in the afternoon what they kill in the morning. At two or three o'clock the mowing ceases, and the raking begins. In this operation, the weakest goes first, that the strongest man may take the heaviest raking; so I am ex officio leader. I must fall smartly to, to keep ahead, or my rear-rank man will

rake my heels off; and for a while I go bravely on. But the peculiar hold, and sliding manipulation of the "rake's-tail" soon tell on my city-bred hands. The insides of my thumbs, and the space between them and my fingers, is first red and then raw; and by the time that the grass lies in winrows, I have done enough. Before sunset the winrows are rolled into cocks, which are shaped conewise, and skilfully shingle-laid for shedding of rain; and with a small load of new hay, hastily pitched upon the cart, for immediate use, we return home.

Close after sunset is milking; after milking, supper; after supper, prayers; and after prayers, sleep; which, indeed. had made an irruption from its legitimate domain, in the chambers above, and taken me at a disadvantage-when I was "down," on my knees, as in duty bound. The steady unmodulated evenness of my uncle's reading-for the family was Episcopalian-and the full melody of the words, put me quickly asleep; and I reluctantly rise, retire, and undress; reluctantly, because the motion charms away the drowsy god into whose embrace I sank so softly, and leaves me broad awake to lie down in bed. But I soon forget that and every other trouble, and know no more until day break.

THE SALT MEADOW.

SALT is good. Men like it, and beasts. To cattle, however, near the sea, is often given an allowance of "salt hay," instead of the pure condiment. Salt hay is of two principal sorts, called, where my information was obtained, "salt grass" and "black-grass." There is also a sedge, which grows along the river-sides and in ditches and marshes; a coarse, swordshaped grass, used for thatching or litter. The salt-grass and black-grass, are fine short grasses, growing upon the level surfaces called "salt meadows." These are alluvial deposits of a strange unctuous marine mud, stretching along the coast in recesses, and up river valleys; a curious half vegetable earth, soft, black, slippery. A twenty-foot pole may be often thrust down into it without finding bottom. Indeed, it sometimes does a very fair business in the quicksand line. Somewhere under the surface of a very smooth-faced salt-meadow, a little east of New Haven, are the duplicate and triplicate of some furlongs of embankment, swallowed down by an unexpected abyss beneath, at the expense and to the chagrin of the New

Haven and New London Railroad Company.

The salt grass is of a bright yellowish green;-a beautiful hue in healthy vegetation, although elsewhere peculiarly sickly and the black-grass, as its name imports, of a very dark green. The stretches of meadow are like great patches of particolored velvet, so soft is the tone of color given by the fineness of the grass and the delicacy of its tints. Rocks, and patches of upland called islands by the farmers, stand out here and there, above the level line of the salt land, as distinctly as any sea-island from the water; and as into the sea, points and promontories of upland project into it.

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The salt haying is later than the upland haying, and in sundry details varies from it. The day in the salt meadow was an adventurous expedition to me; for we had to start early and return late, living several miles up the country. The scene of action, too, was strange and new; open to the sea on one side, swept by the salt breezes, looked in upon by the silent ships that all day long went trooping by, haunted by queer shore-birds and odd reptiles, covered and edged by grotesque plants; a whole new world to an up-country boy. My work was light, for the grass was thin and easy to spread; and I used to spend much of the day in the desultory wanderings that children love. strolled among the sedge and sought muscles; poked sticks down by the "fiddlers' ” holes, and caught the odd occupant by his single claw, as he fled up from the supposed earthquake; chased the said fiddler -a small gray one-clawed crab, who scuttles and dodges about as jerkingly and nimbly as a fiddler's elbow, whence his name as he ran about the banks; raked out oysters from the river-bed close by, and learned the inhuman art of eating them raw; investigated the scabby patches of naked mud, which lie here and there among the grass; rheumy sore-looking places, plantless, crusted over with dry scales, as if a cutaneous disease had destroyed the life of the surface, from an excess, perhaps, of salt, causing humors in the ground, and exanthematous disorders. Or I watched the boatmen, who occasionally "dropped kellick" in the river channel, and plied the oyster-tongs. These are a ferocious hybrid between an iron-toothed rake and a pair of scissors; having the long handles, cross-head and teeth of the former, and the pivotal interduplication of the latter; so that at fifteen or twenty feet under water, the iron teeth bite between each other, like the fingers

of clasped hands, griping firmly whatever is between them. Or I rambled off to one of the tree-crowned "islands" afore mentioned-I always fancied that they were not standing still, but slowly gliding along the meadow, wandering off down to the sea-and explored their nooks and corners. The day waned pleasantly, under strange influences. A vague and dreamy feeling of exploratory desire pervaded the atmosphere. The level land, the level sea, the bright horizon afar over the water, the wide and open views, the dancing of the distance in the hot air, the silent motion of the winged ships, the sighing of the steady wind, as if it felt relief at gliding unbroken over the expanse; the notion of vastness and the dim suggestion of the distance, spoke to all the melancholy longings, and questioning, yearning thoughts that sleep in children's minds-but are too often murdered by ungenial training before they wake.

Then there were curious inventions of husbandry. The meadow is often too soft to bear the loaded cart. Sometimes the elastic greasy crust unexpectedly lets through the wheel, or the feet of the cattle. Then the lofty load careens, and slides off; the oxen kick and plunge while the meadow holds them fast by the heels, or sink to their bellies, and stand still until unyoked, and left to crawl unimpeded out. Sometimes all the chains in the meadow are hitched to the cart-tongue, leading to firm ground; and half-a-dozen teams united drag the distant load ashore. But if the danger of the muddy depths has been wisely foreseen, a "meadow sled " carries the burden safely over. This is a stout drag, consisting of two wide runners well framed together, and so made as to fit under the axle-tree without lifting the wheels from the ground. It is chained to its place, like a peddler's bull-dog; and on this additional bearing, the cart goes securely sliding about over smooth grass and slimy mud, almost as easily as over snow. If even that precaution is judged insufficient, the hay is "poled out." Two stout "hay poles" are thrust beneath the heap, and two men, one behind and one before, carrying it, as upon a sedan, to terra firma. This is sometimes a troublesome business. Mosquitoes are terrifically rife in some parts of the salt meadows. They will rise on one's track almost in a solid mass, and pursue with a wolfishly, bloodthirsty pertinacity, which is pretty sure to result in anger, slaps, and blood. This may not be absolutely unendurable, so long as the hands are free to slap; but when you have a heavy hay

cock squatting on the poles, of which you carry one end, you are pinned; and then, of the above mixture, slaps being unavailable, there remains only the anger and the blood; of which you monopolize the former, and the gentleman with the "little bill" the latter. There is another ugly insect, rarely seen, at least in Connecticut, except upon the salt meadows. It is an enormous black fly, half as large again as a "bull bumble-bee," and a great deal more troublesome. He is a. bloody villain, and a truculent. He carries in his snout a machine compounded of a bradawl and a pump, with which he perforates and depletes his victims; and he sings bass. One of these rascals will make a horse or a yoke of oxen nearly crazy. They will bear tolerably well to be all speckled over with mosquitoes or greenheads," if they can't get rid of them; but this monster carries too many guns. They cannot stand so deliberate and extensive a stab as his; and unless he is forthwith dispatched or driven off, they may be expected to execute antics more energetic than useful.

THE WHITEFISHING.

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SUCH was a day in the salt meadows. But the pleasantest days of my farming, were days of fishing. The sea is an inexhaustible storehouse of fertilizers to the farmers of the coast. Rockweed, seaweed, mud, shells and whitefish, are carted up the country as far as eight or ten miles, and spread upon the land, or deposited in the barn-yard. Thus the bounty of the sea balances the sterility of the granite formation along the sound.

The whitefish is a herring-like fish, very bony and oily, which comes in the summer in shoals, called by the fishermen

schools," ," from unknown regions toward the ever mysterious East, out of the realms of the sea. They are caught by millions and sold by thousands; and are a st- smell, I mean, in the nostrils of those who flee by railroad from the stifling city to Sachem's Head, and to the other shoreward haunts of the "upper ten." But they make corn and potatoes grow nicely: and I found that after working a day or two among their unburied remains, I was not affected either mentally, by the ghastly appearance of the defunct, or physically, by their exhalations.

They come up into harbors and coves to feed, as is supposed-for I don't know that any body has actually seen them at it -and while they are at table, a long seine is dropped round them, and they are en

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