The aegis & intelligencer. [volume] (Bel Air, Md.) 1864-1923, 1879-07-11
Farmers Troubles.

r.. j. Burdette, the Burlington Ht,ucheye
journalist, while on a recent lecturing tour
through Illinois, wrote as follows:
From Augusta to Macomb, every field was
full of plows and patient farmers. Dear, pa
tent, good-natured grumblng agriculturist.
Where farmer gets his good nature from is
a mystery to me every time l look at one.
watched him from the Car window, plodding
along at the tail of the pillow, and wondered
that he ever smiled at all, under any provo
cation. Of all men, it seems to me the far
mer has the best right to grumble Only he
never grumbles at the rich things He grum-
bles at the prices, and then of course nobody
sympathzes with him nor cares a cent for his
troubles, because we grumble ut the same
thing. Prices never did suit anybody. The
seller always thinks they are too low and the
buyer always knows they are too high The
merchant goes into bankruptcy because he is
compelled to sell his goods for half what they
cost him; and the customer goes naked and
starvcs because he can't afford to pay one
half what is asked for them. So the farmer
when he grumbles at the prices, is no worse
off than the rest of us, and accordingly at
tracts no sympathy.
But here is where, to my way of thinking
the gazelle comes in for the farmer
1t is spring, and the annual warfare begins.
Early in the morning the jocund farmer HES
him to the field, and hunts around in the
dead weeds and grass for the plOw he left out
there some time last fall. When he finds, it
he takes it to the shop to have it mended.-
When it is mended he goes back into the
field with it. Half way down the first furrow
he lays, he runs the pillow fairly into big
live oak root, the handles alternately break u
rib on this side of him and job the breath out
I.~cl Ntl,a fl,a
| looking up out of the ground with q pleased
smile of recognition says cheerfully
"Ah, Mr.. Thistlepod, at it again, ell ?"
Fifty feet further on he strikes a stone that
doubles up the pillow point like piece of lead
and while the amazed and breathless agricul-
| turist leans, limp heap of humanity, across
the pillow; the relic of the glacial period re-
marks, sleepily
"Ah, hal spring here already: Glad you
woke me up"
And then the granger sits down and pa,
tiently tries to tic on that pillow point with a
hickory withe, and while he pursues this
fruitless task, the friendly crow swoops down
near enough to ask:
"Goin to put this twenty in corn, this year
Mr.. Thistlepod ?"
And before he has time to answer the sable
bird, q tiny grasshopper, wriggling out of q
| CiOu 81 iuii vi 'SBS Ctth touiitcu
shouts briskly; t.
Here we are again, Mr.. .Thistlepod dinner
for 500, 900, 000,000W
And then a slow moving but very positive
potato bug, crawls out into the sunlight to
see IL the frost has faded his stripes, and says
"The old-fashioned pcachblow potatoes are
the best for sure crop, but the carly rose
should be planted for the first market"
The several new kinds Ofbugs, who haven't
made any record yet, climb over the fence
and come up to inquire about the staple crops
of the neighborhood, and before he can gel
through with them Professor Tice sends hin
circular stating that there won't be droI
of rain from the middle of May till the last O
October. This almost stuns him, but he il
beginning to feel a little resigned when dis
patch is received from the Department of Ag
riculture at Washington, saying that all indi
cations point to q summer of unprecedented
almost incessant and long continued rain