The Bolivar bulletin. [volume] (Bolivar, Hardeman County, Tenn.) 1865-1888, 1878-08-01
Bill Arp-What He Thinks Of Binding
The Sleeves.

j ne S06EeSs
Mr.. Editur: The harvest ia over
Great expectations have not been real.
| lied. Farmin' is a good deal like fishin'
every time you start out you can Just
| see yourself catchin' 'em, but after irwin
every hole in the creek you go home
| sorrowfully, with a fisherman's luck.
But we are not complainin' by no means;
for we've got wheat enuf for biskit every
day and light-bread On Sunday, and q
few bushels to spare for them angels
that's cum along unawares sum of these
days.
We finished cuttin' the oat crop this
mornin', and what with them and the
clover already housed, the cattle are safe
for another year | imagine they look
sassy and thankful but, as for me, Mr..
Editor, l am used up individual. Durin'
harvest have had to be binder, and if
you don't know what that is, ask Harris.
The ends of these fingers which are now
inscribIn' this epistle are in q bad fix.
Skarifde and stuck up with bull nettles
and briars, they are as sore as a school
boys bile. There was sum variation to
my business, such as catchin' young
rabbits and indin' partridge nests and
pickin' dewberries; but the romance
wore off the frat day, and, by the end of
the next, my wife says I was as humble
a man as any woman could desire It's
q nifty purity thing to write about and
make up Dads and PONIES. The golden
grain, the manly reapers, the struttin'
sheaves, the song of the harvesters, and
purity Miss Ruth coqUettin' around the
fields of old man Boaz, and chow iokin'
did they drive their team afeld," is all
sweet and nice to a man up q tree
with an umbral; but if them poets
had to tie wheat half day in q June
sun their sentimentality would hence
forth seek another subjek.
tried swingin' the cradle awhile, but
somehow or somehow else l couldn't ex-
actly get the lick. It wasent the kind
of a cradle I've been used to, and Pm
too old dog to learn new tricks now.
The swing of the reaper's cradle is a
very peculiar mOtiOn-verY regular in
its irregularity, and goes for the weeds
and bushes and briars and the wheat all
the same. Somehow or other it re-
minds me of an independent candidate q
side wipin' around to get offs in 8 twists
fed way. Well, I like independence,
and that's why ! like farmin'--no-
body to look to for Iivin' but Pro-
violence. 1 like to see q man indie
pendent in opinion, and in action. too,
and if he suckseeds it shows
that there is gum in him but it won't
do to run that schedule too long or too
far in politics or religion. Bonaparte
and Beecher tried it, and if they couldn't
keep it up, nobody can't. Everybody
has got 70 fall into line some time For
while all sorts of people will pat an
independent on the back and say, "Go
L. k,y,II u L
fore long they'll begin to think over
what good, g tbinJ he's got, and then
human nature, which you know is as
mean as the devil, will crop out, and the
next time they'll drop him so easy he
went know it. On the whole, the aspirin
man had better go along smoothly with
his party or his church or his copartners,
as the case may be.
General Black says he to me, says he {:
Bill, as you are goin' to tarmin', let
me give you a piece of advice: Don't
go of on new lines, but watch your
Majors, and do purity much as they do"
Well, he didn't mean if the Majors
went barfaoted in the summer time and
slept in a shirt and washed their feet in
skillet, and their darters worked in the
field and dipped snuff, we must do so
too, by no means. But he meant to say
that the kind of farmin' that is sustained
by the majority of farmers was nifty apt
to be the best.
Jesse with gettin' ofis-the best way
3 the old way. 1t may be, however
that Providence does raise up 9 man as
an instrument to reform society,
but the in trument is very
| likely 10 think he is dom It
all on his own hook and he'll keep on
| refoTmin' till the millennium if the peo-
pie will let him. ! think it would be
well enough for him to report progress
some time, and maybe the good Lord
would let his servant depart in peace.
| But you let Teller git taste of Wash.
| ington, and it does look impossible tC
even get him away from there. 81 will
stand for reelection" On course be
will but it does seem to me that if
| had held Iotaten Office right straight
along for forty years I would hunt the
l shade of Liberty Hall and quit. WHY
7 there's forty men in that district beer
| patiently waitin' twenty years for hi,
! chNnce, and he's now proposin' to outlive
'enE all and himself, too. S'pose lie doei
want to die in harness, what's that Il
Berry Houck? There's sum other gen
tlemeA worthy and well qualified, who
! Woul0 LAKE the gears Kindly, and WOrE
in 'em, too. But if had a horse thaf
wore out his breachin' holdin' back III
hill, aud hadent pulled nary pound il
seventeen years, he wouldn't die in ny
harness, shore. He mout hunt anothe
wagin. I've no idee of toadying a MAJ
who toadies everybody and every thin,
l don't like, from General Grant dow
to patent medicine and there's hea,
of folks my way of thinkin'. Ever
time think about it hear myself ex
nloir,nirnl % Time nnt-nart ~