The pioneer-review. [volume] (Philip, Haakon County, S.D.) 1920-current, 1920-10-07
HAAKON COUNTY TYPES.


4 iutCS CildiiSG. ttS ftIiGiiiuS WdTu
was ever saying Its a way time
has The world of today is not
the world of yesterday. For one
thing, the world finds new ways
of doing it's work, and humanity
is certainly always finding new
ways of amusing itself. And just
as certainly there is not as much
poetry in the world as there was
once By way of making our point,
| we rise to inquire what has be-
come of the airy, fairy creature of
the poets fancy commonly called
the milkmaid? When Greene and
Old Kit MarloWe sang and Sir
Francis Drake put out to sea, the
English milkmaid wandered with
grace and lovliness through the
fragrant hay-fields. But her foot
steps seem to have lead her entire
ly out of the world. At any rate
there are none of her kind here in
Haakon county, formerly part of
Stanley, in the State of South Da-
kota.
Then the world was young, now
it is old. Then it was concerned
with milkmaids; now it argues
about the bolshiviki. AS proof of
its youth, we set down the lines
of Sir Thomas Overbury. His little
book Characters" was an ancient
forerunner of the "Haakon County
Types His milkmaid was a "faire
damsel" who hath such fingers
that in milking a cow, it scenes
that SO sweet a milk-presse makes
the milk the whittier, or sweeter."
But the Haakon county milk
maid is likely to be a recent ar
rival from the fjords of Norway.
Though not subject for poetry,
he is usually an agreeable fellow
IN his way, and answers to the
name of Ole Johnson. He wears
corduroys and cow-hide boots. He
uses prodigious quantities of snuff
and swears at the cows in q pro-
family all his own, when they do
not stand around" There is moth
ing delicate about his 'milk-presse
and no one has ever suggested that
it made the milk whittier or sweet
er."
Overbury has been these many
years in his grave, and it would
give him distinct shock if he
could come back and meet Ole, the
Modern Milkmaid. Sir Thomas
pays further tribute to the virtues
of his milkmaid in the following
fashion: "Her breath is her own.
which scents all the yeare long of
June, like a newmade haycock. .
We would not want to go so far
as to say that Ole's breath is not
his own, nor that it does not sent
all the year long a rod away, but
1T certainly does not smell like a
newmade haycock.' It seems to us
more closely akin to onions and
tobacco.
Again Overbury says most tend
erly: Thus lives she, and all her
care is she may die in the spring
time, to have store of flowers
stucke upon her winding sheet
Ole Johnson does not mean to die
Just yet awhile. At any rate he
has not ordered the flowers for his
winding sheet" He is more con.
cerned in living a long while and
in drawing his wages punctnally
II anyone has any flowers for him
they can stick them in the bosom
of his shirt here and now, that he
may inhale their fragrance as ,he
goes about the cow-shed.
It is possibly just as well thai
Old Sir Thomas is dead. Had hi
lived on like Methuselah, he migh1
like SO many other people, have
come to Haakon county to take vi
La homestead. In that event h,
might have met Ole, and he migh1
have met him just at the momen1
when Ole was currying COW will
q milking stool. The scene ant
talk would have panied the OLE
man much. 1t would have brush
ed all the bloom and freshness of
his ideas about milkmaids, because
there is no bloom about Ole. anl
never was, and never will be.
LEAD AND DEAWOOD