The Oskaloosa herald. (Oskaloosa, Mahaska County, Iowa) 1885-1919, 1902-07-17
THE FARM.
Harry Daniels Minor 0bserva.
tions.
THE FARM As A sf,MMER REe


I 1t is at this time of year that many
4 q person, tired of city or town, seeks
4 the quiet farm retreat where the
i spring hen is assassinated before she
/ becomes a 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 its rest
FIJI atmosphere, its poetic scenery and
homemade bread, its highly successful
sunsets, its hneal sausage and uncon-
| ventionalities, its polite butter and it's
barn-yard concerts at 2 a. m, offers
advantages as 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
a courtly and faithful gentleman who
wears a 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 a summer day in the country
where the breeze 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 hur-
ried and extemporaneous remarks of
the heated plowman as he yanks a
top rail off the fence and beat stole
al and 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
shoves up to the cabinet organ and
sings a few good old songs that are
soaked with pathos and punctuated
with notes about four inches too high
VOICE. Tic az lAiC
farm is filled with pleasure.
1t is a great treat to get ont in the
morning when the first pink rays of the
sun are shot athwart the eastern sky,
as 100000 of our poets have originally
and beautifully expressed it, and COM
nnune with 40 or so acres of nature be-
fore breakfast. 1t is a great joy to
be awakened shortly after midnight by
the yell of the feeble minded guinea
and the contralto snort Of the shoat,
to get out while the shadows still point
in a westerly direction and saGnter
DER dewy dell and mortgaged meadow,
to IoI lazily under a sheltering tree
throughout the livelong day with
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
WASTED shoes and recreation, the man
who loves to pasture his family cut in
the quiet rural Businesses, takes his
stationery in hand and writes a press
ing invitation to. himself and sends it
out in the country to his 18th cousin
on his grandfather's sids:,
Dear Cousin Henry:-AlthoGgh We
have not written to you since we re-
turned from your home last summer,
nevertheless, we have. thought of you
every day, and since the weather has
begun to turn warm we are especially
reminded of your delightful home out
there under the breezy naples. We
hope that sometime you Will find OPP
portunity to bring your family and
make us a visit. We have not yet de-
cided where we shall spend our sum
mer vacation. DO you expect to be at
home along about haying time?
Yours, Cousin William"
And the next week there comes re-
ply, written on legal cap paper, with
a pencil that has hard lead and an in
grown point:
"Dear Ostensible Cousin William
Your letter reached us in due time, and
we are all glad 10 learn that you are
going to bring your large and in
quisitive family out here again during
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 for you and
as many of your family as can get on
| one train, and we will try to accom-
modate as many of you as possible.
| Last summer while your family con-
vened here / slept in the milk house
and the hired man slept in the buggy
shed. This will not be necessary if all
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 shed.
"Are you going to bring the boy
who, while he was here last summer
tied himself to one end of rope and
a two-year-old colt to the other end
! hope he has not yet succeeded in as
certaining the death for which ht
seemed to yearn SO ardently that day
/ shall never forget 1t. He had just
said to me that he wanted to test his
strength, and tried to induce him Il
try some other method. While wa
speaking to him about it, the colt sud
denly decided to go over to the othe
side Of the pasture. The boy INFORMED
the colt that he was not quite read,
TO go yet, and then yanked on the rop
70 give emphasis to his remarks. Blu
the colt did not seem to grasp hi
meaning and started TO run. So di
the boy. Both ran In the same diree
ton, and the boy soon found that
xya. onlv necessary for him to take on