Alaska sentinel., 1908-07-30
0LD-TIME FARM BOYS
They Began to Do the Usual Chores at the Age of Seven
 Years.
WORKED IN THE FIELDS AT 10.
In the Evening They Had to Husk Corn and Pare Apples for
 Drying on a String.

What would the boys of to-day think Jf the way the country boys lived sixty and seventy years ago, or even forty years ago, when the writer was boy? asks a contributor to the Rural New Yorker. At the age of we boys q speak more especially about boys, as there were no girls In our family) be- gan to have our regular chores to do. At we began to milk, and at the age of 10 we were expected to be out at f in the morning, and do our share of the milking, feed the pigs and calves, eat our breakfast and away to the field (no compulsory eductional laws in those days) driving oxen to blow or narrowing with an old forty-tooth drag; hoelng corn, for 1t must be hood at least three times. We boys at 10 were expected to hoe a hill and skip a hill to keep up with the men; fetch the water for the men to drink and ride the old mare to cultivate, for the man who held the cultivator must have a boy to ride the horse, but he must not let her step on hill of corn, for have gone to ruin. I wonder what the farmers of those days would have thought to See the farmers of to-day gliding through the cornfeld with a two-horse, double-row cultivator doing the work of six men.
 The boys of those days had to work. The majority of farmers seemed to think that all boy was created for was what work they could get out of him; that boy ever became tired was something against the laws of nature if he Jagged he was lazy. The school days of the farmer boys of those times were from about Dec. 1 to April 1, but mind you, we were expected to go to the barn evenings and husk corn until the husking was all done. After that was done, then for the apples, for about 75 to 100 bushels must be pared, Quartered and cored, and strung on strings with the rib of an old umbrella for a needle, and hung up behind the kitchen stove to dry. This work was all done evenings. About two or three bushels were considered to be fair evenings work. Oh, yes, we used to have corn huskings and apple parlngs. It broke the monotony, and we young sters had lots of fun, but I guess the boys of to-day would think 1t was rath- CT tame sport for now the hotels and saloons have more attractions. The average farmers boy of the twentieth century has more money to spend on himself in one year than the boy of fifty years ago had in his entire boy hood days. There was not even a S1,0OO boy in those days.
 At the age of and 10, respectively, my brother and I rode our old bob tailed mare, Slippery Jane," to school, a distance of two miles. What would the boys of this age think to see two such youngsters astride of one horse? drove her hitched to fathers old pung. In connection with this I never shall forget an incident, although 1t was a very common occurrence for boys of those days to be left alone and with the care of the premises. My brother was 10 and I Il years old. We came from school one very cold, stormy night In February. We stopped on our way to leave a girl who lived at a neigh bor's, and who rode to and from school with us.
 The neighbor was relative of the family and he told us that our people had all gone away early in the day, as near relative of the family had died, and that we must hurry home and do up the chores, which consisted of about forty head of cattle to care for, also horses, hogs, hens and various other things. Our neighbor relative told us to hurry home, do up the chores, eat our supper, be careful of fire and get to bed early and get up early next morning, do up the chores, give our cowhide boots a fresh coat of grease and make ready to go to the funeral of the relative where our people had gone the day before.
 Well, we trudged home as fast as we could hurry the old mare. The snow was falling fast and a stiff wind was coming up In the west. Our home was mile from the main highway and over a mile from the nearest neighbor and In the very shadow of the heavy tim Der. We arrived home to find 1t desert ed except for our old shepherd dog Jim and the house as cold as an Iceberg. You can bet we were not very long in doing up those chores and getting our selves tucked away in bed. It seems that I can hear now the wind howl around that old-fashioned Dutch house up there ou the hill that cold and stormy night. The next morning we were up bright and early to make ready for our journey, some five or six miles owov Our n,iphhor relative came and