Show UPON AGRICULTURE Bill Nye Has Something to Say About Crops A BATHER PELLUCID LETTER Some Account of Jnanlta and the Circumstances Circum-stances Under Which His Lines to a Mule Were Penned For THE SUNDAY HERALD By special arrangement ar-rangement with the author BUXCOMEE COUSTT N CIt is now the season of the joar for gathering in the fall crops The yield has not been up to what I bad looked for on my own place Farming with mo is not indulged in for the coarse joy it yields or the wealth which it nours into my coffers I do it for the reason that I think it makes me a better man I also want my boys to learn to love the farm So I cot them to put into crop a small piece of ground and agreed to pay them a high price for their vegetables Being Be-ing a busy man I have not paid much attention at-tention to the process of their farming but I have bought from them 35 i worth of truck which I could have gotten of the neighbors for S3L30 and which my young agriculturists agricultur-ists I am told did buy at oven less than that I halo to see boys do that to a man who has always been regarded as a first class parent in every way MY rAre ANIMALS censist among other things of a rather coarse but well meaning cow which we bought here Sho was born at the south and some of the best blood of this country flows in her veins Ideality Is small but her ailmentiveness and inhabitiveness are large She has a vivacious way with her that wins every one but she still retains a feeling of intense hatred toward the people of the north Though I had nothing to do with the war and did not favor it at the time this cow holds me responsible to a degree for the results of the war and I have never been able to get en rapport with her It is the same with a little mouse colored ass or burro which I bought lor use on the farm and for ornamental riding over the highly inflamed roads of North Carolina His name is Juanitapronounced Whanee to Whaneota in the language of Patrick Henry is dead sore on the war II and regards re-gards ino as having brought it on whereas 1 did notdo so but on the contrary did all I could honorably to evade it I wrote to a paper in IbGO being at that time at Winnipeg Winni-peg that unless the war was prevented in some way I would stay where I was for along a-long time BUT JCANITA GETS MAD about the war and broods over it and I mourns and mourns and mourns Juanita is also childless and that makes him feel I the war worse I think than ho otherwise would I Tuanita was owned by a neighbor of ours named Kettles Mr Nettles did not seem to want to part with Juanitabutdid finally and last week when I offered to let him have the pot he said No the wound is healed over now Do not tear it open afresh by compelling nie to go all through it again I have learned to live without Juanita now I I Do not jar my newly healed heartstrings I i I any more Take him away or I will set the I I dog on you So I took Juanita home again I j I I I I1XES TO A MCLE When we first let the children ride on him he did not seem to brood so much over the war but we noticed that the children felt uneasy about something and pretty soon I discovered that little souvenirs of the late war were to be found in great numbers num-bers all over him So I had to disinfect him and renovate him before we could use him But ho regards himself yet as my superior I can see that Though poor and measly with large bald places on his person per-son where ho had rubbed himself against an upright farm while trying to forget tho past and get rid of the results the war I can see tuat no regards himself as unfortunate unfortu-nate but refined I ANITA REGARDS ME AS A LOW coarse Yankee whose oats are reluctantly I j taken in exchange for his refined social Influence II I In-fluence He does not have much fun and < ever and anon he bursts forth into a wail i I that shows how keenly he suffers He is the worst sample of motheaten respectability respectabil-ity and unlaundried hauteur that I ever saw Ho has the pride of Lucifer and the personal per-sonal habits of Dives He is most unfortunately unfor-tunately made up of strange contradictions and unhappy warring elements which fill I I his breast with a wild tumult I I once wrote some lines to a pet mule or I I I mine among which occur the following i i which I have addressed to Juanita durbg the past week There is a vein of mnlun i I choly running through the work which 1 some of my friends at the Authors club say reminds them of Dante It is in blank i verse which seems to be the only literary method for successfully treating the mule The words and music are as follows Oh lovely gentle unobtrusive mule bon Blandest Idly gainst the azure sky And sweetly sadly slngest like a hired man Who taught thee thus to warble In the noontide heat and wrestle with Thy deep corroding grief and joyless woe Who taught thy simple heart It pentup wildly warring waste Ot wanton woo to carrol forth upon tho silent airJ Second Verse I chide thee not because thy Bong Is fraught with grief embittered Monotone and joyless minor chords Or wild imported melody for thou Art restless woo begirt and Compassed round about with gloom Thou timid trusting orphan mule I S Few Joys indeed aro thine Thou thrice bestricken madly Mournful melancholy mule And he alone who strews Thy pathway With his cold remains Can give the recompense OI festering and injurious woe Be who hath sought to steer Thy limber yielding tall JTerntnst thy crupper band Hath given the joy and he alone 1neo talone Tis true he may have shot Athwart the zodiac and looking Oer the outer walls upon The New Jerusalem Have uttered vain regrets Thou recliest not oh orphan mule For it hath given thee Joy and Bound about thy bursting heart And held thy totteriug reason To Its throne > Sing on oh mule and warble n the twilight gray a I Un chidden by tho heartless throng Sing of thy parents on the fathers aide I Yearn for the days now past and gone I For ho who pens th se halting Limping lines to thee Doth bid thee yearn and yearn and yearn The above lines were written while recovering re-covering from an injury received while try ing to thread the tail of one of these little creatures through split stick in the fall of 1875 Though THE WRITER WAS KICKED WITH PAIN I the poem seems to breathe a spirit of forgiveness for-giveness and untutored poesy and trust and passion as well as the massive poetic feet < which characterize some of the earlier works of Thomas Brower Peacock of Topeka To-peka Kan I employ on ray farm also a small pair of variegated steers which the artist has kindly agreed to illustrate They arc having a sitting now as I write These docile creatures are entirely under my control and though much larger than the average North Carolina steer of trade I I they are thoroughly subservient to my will I I and my admirers need not fear that anything I any-thing will happen to me that would deprive them of me for I often enter their cage I and fool with them by the hour at times inserting my head in their extended jaws as far as it will go and then rudely remov I leg it Their names are Brin and Bolly c I I MILLJPP I A PAin OF VARIEGATED STEERS Crops here are not above the average this year Rabbits are eating much of my vegetables veg-etables and tbat together with a prolonged visit from the artist who is sketching my steers will make times pretty hard here during the winter Hay is rather a light crop hero every year and grass of all kinds does poorly Very few lawns of any merit are seen in the state owing to the extreme thinness of the soil and its tendency to wash into a neighboring state I used bonedust in my farming this year aud the crop will pay the drayage on this bonedust leaving perhaps IS or 20 cents for future use I use only the best bonedust if possible no matter what it cost It will pay in the end Nothing is gained by buying buy-ing tho bonedust of inferior people Commuters between Now York and Philadelphia Phil-adelphia will find a good bone works bo tween Jersey City and Newark It is on the left hand side as youbut you can go right to it if you wish to do so Apples are looking well especially the Early Horse apple the Low Flat Early Dutch Drum Head apple the Isabella apple ap-ple the Limbortwig applo the Late Worm less apple the Dead Red or League apple with itontiiu vita works in it the Winter Death Rate Seedling apple and the Trunk Line apple all arc looking very well indeed in-deed Plowing for winter grains Is now going forward especially on some of the more erect farms Rye will be sown in large quantities here next year A North Carolina Caro-lina farm looks best with vegetables at the base then grain of some kind and then at the top a bor er of peavines running around the upper edgoof the farm together with a moulding of some kind to hang pictures on Some of theso farms look well when draped with something pretty and on cold nights I hang a dark drop dc tat portiere over my farm or sometimes a rice curtain TO REEL THE MOTHS OUT OF MY WATER lIELOXS Willing hands are now working on the roads of Buncombe county and orders are issued that the dead along the road who have perished from internal injuries or corduroy cor-duroy dislocations concussions etc shall be buried at the expense of the state Our principal roads are soon to be macadamized mac-adamized and the legislature will be memorialized me-morialized This will bo of untold benefit to both The condition of this country is rapidly approaching completion and will one day I mid to those already pastthus gathering in its wonderful career all those which is held forth to be as tho good book has said For the night cometh ahen no man shall roll together as a scroll falling some on good ground and some on the just as well as the unjust and as Isaiah would say if I do not forget the exact wording Go I I forth as the cedars of Lebanon or a great rock in a weary land to cry out foal not and flourish from the rising of the sun even I unto the third and fourth generations of just men mado perfect i The above suggests to me a note just received I re-ceived from a correspondent of mine who has been writing to me regularly for over i twoyears though I have not answered any 1 of his letters because they were too deep I for me Profound thought on religious or I I political matters tho doctors have warned i me against as either one carried to excess causes the formation of large lumps in the brain and at times is apt to promote a fun gus growth in the north side of the brain cellTwo Two weeks ago I pot letter from this man but could not seem to quite cope with it being rather superficial in my reasoning aud better fitted perhaps for watching P T Barnums tomb than for active mental exertion In hot weather So judge of my delight when I received the following yesterday yes-terday Mr Edgar tV Nye DEAR Siu Although it should not be a consideration con-sideration and very probably is not I would like to say I wish to take back the suggestions I sent you other than as applied to myself increased in-creased to the extent that 1 want nothing to do with H whatever also probably uncalled for The third party Is all right enough and can be improved as having something to it and in any case is working In from every view the best direction free and the question brought up taken out or given a back seat or no prominence or hedged free silver coinage 110 good can possibly pos-sibly come from but which within a need could bo n thousand times better handled and meet case more mone need and accompanying possibilities pos-sibilities taken the best advantage of or furthered fur-thered with it The back gold pay Idea in regard re-gard to illogical nonsense as a question and especially unjust in lopsidedness both within the present condition and as policy Very respectfully yours There are three other men and a woman who are writing to mo on the same subject every week I like their clear and unanswerable unan-swerable logic but I cannot do the work on a large farm and expect to be quick enough to grasp all these great questions in aminute Tho fact is that by the time I havo done all the chores at night and bathed my chub by feet at the vell snd wiped them on the grass I ought to go to bed and too often I do so when mental growth I can see has to bo sacrificed and nice profound thoughts remain in an unthought state I have also got another correspondent who thinks he is a geological epoch Ho threatened to come and visit me at my home That is why I came here Here I know that I am safe Unless some one repairs re-pairs the road |