The Normal Record. June 1902

              8
THE NORMAL   RECORD.
of the ranch kindly presented each of us with
a pitchfork. To the reader who may be wondering if we did any work that day, I will
say that we did.
About half-past 9 in the evening we commenced work, or as a journalist would put it,
made our debut. Fancy, reader, a large
field, in which two mowers were steadily running euttir.g the hay. Also, draw upon your
imagination enough to picture a large, anything but comfortable sun sending down in
generous amount his loving rays, or, as
Lowell has said, "Then Heaven tries the earth
if it be in tune, and over it softly her warm
ear lays."
Such was the scene. Nothing to be seen
but acres and acres of hay; nothing to be
beard but the ring of fork tines as the five
pleasure seekers industriously used their
forks under the watchful eyes of the not far
distant boss. I should have called the reader's attention to the fact that there were no
shade trees to be included in this picture.
Shakespeare has said that it is a wise father
that knoweth his own son; and I think, had
he have written a sonnet about ranching, he
would have said that it is a wise farmer who
leaveth no spreading rape on his ranch.
While we were an extremely conscientious crowd, I am afraid we would
have found it convenient to have shocked hay
in the shade frequently if we had had the
chance. Many were the comments upon the
ability of the sun to make things warm.
Nature poets, as Wordsworth and others,
may have wandered along banks of streams
and in other shady places, and thus have
seemingly thrown an inspiration within beautiful poems. Whittier wrote of Maud Muller
raking the meadow sweet with hay, of the
singing birds and the humming bees, or perhaps, of the low of cattle. This a poet might
have done; but I am sure that not one of us,
after the first half hour's work, had much
poetry in his soul.
I said we commenced work at half-past 9.
Well, about 10 o'clock, and from then on till
12, watches were frequently consulted, and
many comments were heard about time dragging. One suggested that we were too far
from the house to hear the dinner bell;
another, that perhaps they had forgotten to
ring it.    Various comments were indulged in,
till at last that most welcome of sounds, the
ringing of the dinner bell, was heard. Pitchforks were hastily thrown aside, and then a
short run of perhaps two hundred yards, and
then, after a delightfully refreshing wash,
dinner wvs served. We are told somewhere
to put our faith in spiritual things: and not in
material things. Well, this particular noon
we completely overlooked this command till
after dinner. After an hour's rest we were
again ready to continue our field-day exercises. The day finally came to an end, and to
say we were glad does not express it.
After an excellent supper we were invited
into the parlor, where we enjoyed some music
and social chat. We retired early, not because we were tired, but because we did not
wish to keep our host up late.
To cut a long story short, the next morning we were awakened by a loud knocking on
the door and a summons to breakfast. We
would have eujoyed resting another hour, but
as resting is psychologically ignominious, we
rose.
The reader may expect another account of
the day's labor; but we didn't think best to
pitch hay that day, because it rained; aud
while we were very sorry that the rain was
spoiling the hay, we were not very sorry that
we were not working. In our short experience of the day before, we did not reconcile
our muscles to this most arduous of tasks, as
was evinced by the number of sore-armed
young men the next day.
While I think hay pitching is an honorable
and a noble calling, I would advise any of my
Normal friends to steer clear of a hay field.
''He who attacks an ahsent friend, or who
does not defend him when defamed by another—that man is a dark character; do
you, Roman, beware of him."
" All the arts which belong to polished life
are held together by some common tie, and
connected, as it were, by some intimate relationship. "
"Let   the   ignorant   learn,   and   let   the
learned improve their recollection.'