Twice-a-week plain dealer. (Cresco, Howard County, Iowa) 1895-1913, 1902-07-29
THE FARM AS A SUMMER RESORT.

the quiet farm retreat where the
spring hen is assassinated before she
becomes greatgrandmother where
the fatted pie is butchered three times
day, and where the egg is Slaughtered,
while still in its infancy.
Many people believe that the farm,
with its drowsy solitude and it's rest
full atmosphere, its poetic scenery and
homemade bread, its highly successful
sunsets, its ~lineal sausage and uncon-
ventionalities, it's polite butter and its
barn-yard concerts at a. M, offers
advantages as q summer retreat that
can be obtained nowhere else.
There are a great many people who
like the fashionable summer hotel
where everything is cooked in French
and served with foreign accent by
courtly and faithful gentleman who
wears tight dress suit and loves to
bring you your soup with his thumb in
it. There are others who enjoy the
more modest hotel where the ceilings
and scale of prices are lower, and where
the versatile night clerk also acts in
the capacity of head waiter and cham
bermaid. And there are still others
who prefer the farm as their summer
retreat.
That the latter class is, perhaps, the
smallest of the three is hard to under-
stand, for what could be more delight
full than summer day in the country
where the breaze blows gently across
meadow and field, where the cows low
hungrily at the pasture gate, and
where the song and the laughter Of the
happy reaper is mingled with the huF-
ried and eNtempcrageon remarks Of
! the heated plowman as he yanks a
| top rail off the fence and beat stoie=
al aud headstrong horse back into
the furrow? From the moment when
the Poland China rooster first crows
at peep of day down, to the long,
drowsy evening when the hired girl
shoyes up to the cabinet organ and
sings a few good old songs that are
soaked with pathos and punctnated
with notes about four inches too high
for her voice, the summers day at the
farm is filled with pleasure.
1t is great treat to get out in the
| Moraing when the first pink rays Of the
sun are shot athwart the eastern sky
as 100000 of oaF poets have originally
and beautifully expressed il, and com.
mune with 40 or so acres of nature be:
| fore breakfast. 1t is great Joy to
be awakened shortly after midnight by
the yell Of the Predetermined guinea
| and the contralta snort Of the shoat,
to get out while the shadows still point
in westerly direction and sahntel
DER dewy deli and mertgaged meadow
to loll lazily under shelteripg tree
throughout the livelong day wifi
nothing to do but think over our past
life and shake ants out of our sleeve.
During the first warm days of spring
| when the buckwheat cake and the fan.
mel undershirt are laid aside and fancy
begins to turn to thoughts of short
waisted shoes and recreation, the man
who loves fp pasture his family out il
the quiet rural ias1tNasssss, takes his
stationery in hand and WFitese prsss,
ing invitation to himself and sends II
out in the country to his 18th cousin
on his grandfa theirs side:
Dear Cousin Henry. w
have not written to you since we re
turned from your home last summer
nsrseahsless. we have thought of 20,
every day, asd si2ce the weather ha,
begun to turn warm we ase especially
reminded of your delightful home on,
4 fi1pe under the breezy mhples. W.
hope that son.etime you will find op
portunity to bring your family ant
make us a visit We have not yer ~
eided where we shall spend our sum
meT vacation. DO you expect to be al
home along about haying timea
Yours. Cousin William"
And the next week there comes re.
| ply, written on legal cap paper, witt
a pencil that has hard lead and an In
grown point:
'Dear Ostensible Cousin William
Your letter reached.us in due time, anG
we are all glad to learn that you are
going to bring your large and in
quisitive family out here again duriat
haying time to let the cows into the
oats, feed new wheat and collie to the
colts and play hide.and-seek in the
| tomatoes. We will look fof you ane
as many of your family as can get o,
one train, and we will try to accom-
modate as many of you as possible
Last summer while your family con
yened here / slept in the milk house
and the hired man slept in the buggy
shed. This will not be necessary if al
of you come here this summer, how
ever, as we can arrange it SO that the
| hired man can sleep in the milk house
while will sleep in the buggy she'd.
1 care you going to bring the boy
who. while he was here last summer
tied ht#sslf to one end of rope and
a two-year-o'd colt t9 the other end
/ hope he has not yet sueeeedsa il as
pertaining the death for which he
seemed to yearn SO ardently that day
shall never forget it. He had just
said to me that he wanted to test hi,
strength, a2d I tried to induce him tt
try some other method. While wal
| speaking to him about 1t, the colt sud
denly decided to go over to the othai
side of the pasture. The boy informed
,ahe colt that he was not quite ready
to go yet, and then yaHiAsl on the rope
to give emphasis to his remarks. ny
the colt did not seem to grasp .taiti
meaning and started to run. So dle
the boy. Both ran in the same airec
M f,,,