Worcester daily spy. [volume] (Worcester [Mass.]) 1850-1888, 1863-09-17


The barns are sweet as any lady's boudoir
with the scent of ''new.mown hay, even the
second-crop is about ''made" and ''housed,"
and the smiling farmer calls it a ''pretty fair
yield-considering. How the grass did fall |!
You saw man apparently riding at leisure
about his fields, round and round, up and
across, this way and that, as though he were
testing the capacity of the land for race
couse. nearer approach gave to the ear a
strange ''click, click, click" which evidently
meant Business" and sounded as if some
metallic tongue, striking the roof of an iron
mouth, (Plato had a golden mouth, why
should there not be an iron one, then? ''but
not in a copper-head, thank GodD was urg-
ing on the horses to racing speed. On arrival
at the spot, the trottiug- sulky proved TO be a
moving machine; the farmer was impollte
enough to give Timothy" though living in
clover, decided 'cut' when he bowed to
him, and the old scythed war chariots which
moved down men, had evidently been pressed
into the service of agriculture and ''gone to
grass Mother Earth must think men have
improved in the tonsorial art, for never did
she have her hair cut so rapidly, never was
she shaved in such style before. Yes, shared
for between you and me ("tell it not in Gath,
whisper it not in the streets of Ascalon,")
Mother Earth has a-beaId Aud why
nOt?-when we know she takes a sly
pipe whenever she can get out of the
way, down among the South American
solitudes, or can climb out on the
house-top and perch on the very ridge pole
itself up there in cool, retired Iceland, and
not seldom will she indulge under the very
nose of King or Kaiser, in her own central
chimney corner near Naples. But enough of
female boards; let us not trench on forbidden
ground! "Revenons nos moutons," feeling
rather sheepish withal.
The vast grain fields of the West have
yielded up their treasure, the golden sheaves
Charles's Vain itself might have been filed,
though that is always out in theweather, never
coming to any barn, but contenting itself with
driving round and round the North Star. And
now that the wheat is pounded into new flour
and the spectators are eager to transmute its
airy gold TO substantial coin-or its lovely
green to green. backs, great focks OF birds,
grouse, pigeons, plovers, quail, cartridges, "a
kind OF second crop,) have descended as
cleaners into these reaped fields, and the
sportsmen, with glad hearts and blood tngng
in their veins for JOY, go out to their harvest
in the golden atmosphere of these Autumn
days.
New England corn fields are browning in
the sun with their glossy green mantles, and
silken scarts folded away, they stand in plain
home-spun, waiting for the "husking"; jolly,
w:thal, hiding mischievously the ''red-ears'
for the sake Of the kissing at the husking-
frolic, and the red ears that shall burn on
some gallant Jonathan's head, when he
has striven in vain to win his reward from
glowing cheeks, and ruefully wishes the
s'box" had only been softened by ''mitten.'
Among the corn lie the squashes and pump
kins, another harvest the earth offers, their
broad faces, radiant with delight, fairly grin
ming, with expanded cheeks,-the clowns in
the circus,-not so poetical or so beautiful,
perhaps, as scarlet peoples shining mid the
corn, but quite as useful and agreeable for all
that.
Harvests who shall say how many the pro.
digal earth offers for our gathering? Besides
the corn and grain, the vegetables and fruit
and flowers, there are harvests that no agri-
cultural, or horticultural, or Horticultural re-
port takes note of, and yet like the unseen,
ever-active electricity, these give life and
motive to all the others, -harvests of beauty,
of wisdom, of strength and patience, that the
heart gamers, forever pulling down.ts barns
to build greater, and into which none are so
poor that they may not enter. Come, friends,
let us 60 harvesting We have not perhaps a
"harnsum kerridge," but whether it be phaton
or sportng-wagon let us be content so that
only good ''roatlster" is in harness, and a
freight of genial kindness laughs behind 1t
does rain little, but what matter? The
''sugar and salt is all under cover, so we will
defy the penetrating moisture. These rain
drops are evidently, from their uncertain fiut-
ter and lightness, travelled drops they have
been up Mt. Washington this summer, and
urOppeu GOWN NlaRaId, anu Juukelteu al
Trenton, and laughed at the wry faces made
up at them at Saratoga, and now they are
tired perhaps and want ride, or are a little
curious to know what three honest chaps
these arc, who are laughing SO. evidently
out for lark, which is singing out of sight,
and shall only be caught when the skies fall.
We recognise now the wisdom of that famous
old woman who lived in a shoe, for what shell
ter is like this which our boot gives us?
harvest of beauty lies all around us ready
TO be gathered into our lives; out from great
cloud-rfts falls golden rain of sunlight: the
blue of the infinite spaces breaks through and
beckons to us; vast sweeps of shadow trail
along the hills, gloom and glory share the world
between them, dividing it anew each instant
and each instant heightening its beauty. and
dazzling us with some unimagined splendor.
See the stately evergreens, their sharp foliage
ridgedsO clearly against the green blackness
Of their shadows Ruskn thought that nobo-
dy but Turner could paint them, and Turner
did not dare to try. The river is full of glim-
mering light tho the clouds have gathered
darkly again, AMI the east wind is blowing