San Andreas independent., 1857-10-24

A PATENT HAY CUTTER-My neigh
Dor, Pope, has got a patent hay-cutter
that cost him $3.50. He had been talk
ing of getting one ever since he got mar
ried, and the baby is now going on seven
years old, so you can imagine how anx-
ious we all got to see it. (the cutter, not
the baby.) Well, the Sultana landed it
at Hickman. He sent Jim down to bring
it out, and though his grass was hardly
ripe enough for cutting, he set it (cutter,
not grass) right up, and gave notice that
he should commence work with it the
next morning.
| We all went to see it, we and such of
our women folks as were in a condition to
go out. 1t is curious thing, one of
thase patent cutters, aud reminds you OF
/ hardly know what. There's pulpit
for the driver and a long yards arm stand
ing out to the left, and a variety of Curl
Gus arrangements Pope showed them
all to us, with the air of man who had
used patent cutters all his days and knew
their value Then he told Jim to bring
out Ball and Sprig, and gear them in.-
Now Ball is fiery for four year old, and
as for Sprig, Jim only dare drive her IN
the wagon, when there's an extraordinary
heavy load, and then there's generally
bill of mending to pay. | suggested to
Pope that, may be, he had better send
over and get my greys, as they are quite
docile, but he wouldn't listen to me, only
to show me, in one Of the advertisements
of the Patent Cutter, that "child might
drive them," and "thc commonest stock
on the farm will answer to work them"
1t took some time to get Sprig hitched
up. Ball, however, went into the gear
conscientiously, for once in his life, and
then Pope gets up into his pulpit, cracks
his whip and starts them. A patent hay
cutter, if you ever heard one, makes
singular noise, or, rather, compound of
noises 1t whistles, it squeaks, it groans,
it rattles, it roars. The faster you drive
it the greater the variety of sounds, while,
if you attempt to stop it, though | never
saw one that did stop, am told few can
stand the peal 1t was so with Pope's.
The first motion of the wheels shook the
earth; the second revolution, and l in
voluntarily clapped my fingers in my
ears, while Mrs. Hoggins, who is a strong
minded woman, quailed and fed. am
willing to sign an affidavit, and believe /
could get every person who was on the
ground to join me in it, that nobody in
Fulton county ever heard of anything so
awful before. But how, you will ask,
did Ball and Sprig take it? can only
say they took it right along. With a
spring that raked diameter of grass nine
feet across into one frightful cock, they
jerked the reins out of Pope's hands and
started east. Pope fell from his pulpit
westward, fortunately striking his head
into the cock, and experiencing no dam
age. Jim, that blubber-lip of an Afri-
can, who knows no better, sprang before
the horses, and was made pavement of
instanter. Ball tapped him with hind
foot on his forehead; Sprig placed both
fore feet upon his st-seat of his breeches
| mean; the patent-cutter went over him,
moving off the braids into which the sill
ly old darkey always knots his wool, and
we picked him up at the tail of the ma
chine, wiser, if not better man.
But oh! that patent cutter how it
did NOW Popes grass Could the horses
only have been kept in the track, his
nineteen acres would have been done be-
fore dinner. And to see how beautifully
it worked grass, bushes, saplings, stumps,
twas all the same to the cutter-all went
down before it like bricks. So long as it
lasted | can cordially testify to its being
the most complete affair for cutting grass
that ever was brought to Fulton county