BOOK THIRD.

BUCOLICS.

"Let me be no assistant for a State,

But keep a Farm and Carters."

SHAKSPEARE

-"HAMLET."

A

WELL-ORDERED farm is a little republic, having its President and its Ministers of State. Every day brings its dues, recurring with the rising and setting of Matters do not go on by a bell, as in rattling factory town; but they come round n as unbroken an order, describing as perfect circle, and representing as momentous intersts.

he sun.

At three o'olock in the morning, Cockrow. The feathered lord's perch is in the basement of the barn, and his clarion sounds nuffled and distant. A second, awaiting out this well-known signal from his elder, rects himself proudly beside his dames and sounds a lustier note, with a strain of defiance n it. Then a third, and a fourth; and presently every cock that has sway over a harem n the country neighborhood sends forth his shrill token of the coming of the morn. They call, one to the other, from farm to farm, and

from hill-side to valley. The still air su becomes alive. Every barn-yard gives welcome to the breaking day. The holds, far and wide, awake, and know th gates of the day are soon to be opened

The farmer who pretends to be a fa indeed, dresses and calls his help; whil housewife is pottering over pans and k in the kitchen, making ready to roast and stew and bake, in the big fireplace wher many rows of pot-hooks hang from the c The men trudge off, half awake, to the yard, and the milk is soon churning into foaming pails between their knees. About door troop old hens with chickens in cha clucking and scratching as busily as if whole summer-day were not before them, a no bugs and flies out of bed, either. The goes purring around the kitchen and the do step, rubbing herself affectionately against o and another, and tendering expressions of b joy at seeing the family about once more.

When the hired men and boys have sous their heads in the freshly drawn water th stands on the bench outside, and the milkin is done, they go to the sheds and barns an out-buildings to get ready the tools with whic their day's work is to be accomplished

Whether it be over carts and chains and harws and ploughs, or scythes and cradles and kes and wagons, the yard is, for some little ne, a scene of life and bustling activity. All this while, too, preparations are making the house for breakfast; and when it is ially announced, and the feet of hungry men ɩve been scraped at the door, the work at the ard suggests nothing so much as the work the fields afterwards. The eating is not inced, if the meat is. Every dish has a relh of its own. A piece of cold meat is a ece of cold meat, to be eaten without misvings of dyspepsia and indigestion. Simple s the table is, it is loaded with the fat of the nd. Who that knows new milk and fresh eam, yellow butter or new-laid eggs, but kes in the picture with a single recollection? If it be Spring-time, — when buds are burstg, and leaves expanding to the sun, and eamy smokes are working up from valley nd hill-side, and calves are bleating from the ard for mothers that call them from the pasares, and life sparkles again in the running rooks, and waters glisten in little pools all bout the lowlands, - the man of the hard ands, but soft heart, is turning up the sod with the gleaming share, his boy astride the