OCR Text |
Show Back To The Farm A celebrated writer recently expressed the belief be-lief that all men after they reach fifty years of age, have a longing to get back to the quiet of the farm. We believe that is true only of men whose boyhood years were happy ones on the farm. With old people the events of five years ago are dim in memory, but the events of five and forty years ago aro vivid. And if a boy grew up in a ' happy home on a farm, and especially if he was fond of the animals on the farm and tho birds that had a morning call for him and gave him concerts when the day grew near its close; whenever such a one is unoccupied, if ho watches he will find himself calling up the animals that he used to prt, and listening to the birds that sang to him. He will hear the lark and the robin, the whir of tho partridge in the woods, and tho miserly yellow yel-low hammer's tapping, see the flocks of black birds and blue birds and mark the silver shimmer of the sunlight on their wings. See the yellow birds and note the starlings with their buff trimmings trim-mings and the old crows cawing. The old house dog was old faithfulness itself, his affection all-embracing all-embracing and it was the saddest day of the year when he died. Then the horses. Was ever a colt before or since as fine as the one that would leave its mother and come to him for cake and sugar? And the fruits. Not a good apple in the world for these thirty years past, there are no such apples as the old Rhode Island Greenings, the Pippins, the Grand Spys, the Schwars that were yellow clear down to tho core, and such a flavor. And the peaches and especially the cider. Who has tasted any real cider for forty years? And the old oak in the corner of the woods, who ever saw an oak like that? Gnarled maybe and with some dead limbs, but erect as it had been for a century, defying the thunderbolt. And the hickory nuts and beech nuts and butternuts and the squirrels scolding as they watched him there's not much worth living for any more. |