BOOK THIRD.

BUCOLICS.

"Let me be no assistant for a State,

But keep a Farm and Carters.”

SHAKSPEARE

"HAMLET."

A DAY'S WORK ON THE FARM.

A

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

At three o'olock in the morning, Cockcrow. The feathered lord's perch is in the basement of the barn, and his clarion sounds muffled and distant. A second, awaiting but this well-known signal from his elder, erects himself proudly beside his dames and sounds a lustier note, with a strain of defiance in it. Then a third, and a fourth; and presently every cock that has sway over a harem in 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 suddenly becomes alive. Every barn-yard gives cheery welcome to the breaking day. The households, far and wide, awake, and know that the gates of the day are soon to be opened wide.

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

When the hired men and boys have soused their heads in the freshly drawn water that stands on the bench outside, and the milking is done, they go to the sheds and barns and out-buildings to get ready the tools with which their day's work is to be accomplished.

Whether it be over carts and chains and harrows and ploughs, or scythes and cradles and rakes and wagons, the yard is, for some little time, a scene of life and bustling activity.

All this while, too, preparations are making in the house for breakfast; and when it is finally announced, and the feet of hungry men have been scraped at the door, the work at the board suggests nothing so much as the work in the fields afterwards. The eating is not minced, if the meat is. Every dish has a relish of its own. A piece of cold meat is a piece of cold meat, to be eaten without misgivings of dyspepsia and indigestion. Simple as the table is, it is loaded with the fat of the land. Who that knows new milk and fresh cream, yellow butter cr new-laid eggs, but takes in the picture with a single recollection?

If it be Spring-time, when buds are bursting, and leaves expanding to the sun, and steamy smokes are working up from valley and hill-side, and calves are bleating from the yard for mothers that call them from the pastures, and life sparkles again in the running brooks, and waters glisten in little pools all about the lowlands, - the man of the hard hands, but soft heart, is turning up the sod with the gleaming share, his boy astride the