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There are so many bright spots in the life of a farm-boy, that I sometimes think I should like to live the life over again; I should almost be willing to be a girl if it were not for the chores. There is a great comfort to a boy in the amount of work he can get rid of doing. It is sometimes astonishing how slow he can go on an errand, he who leads the school in a race.
It is all so enchantingly fresh and green on one of these rare bright days: the trig lass bleaching her 'claes' on the grass by the burn near the little stone bridge; the wild partridges whirring about in pairs; the farm-boy seated on the clean straw in the bottom of his cart, and cracking his whip in mere wanton joy at the sunshine; the pretty cottages; and the gardens with rows of currant and gooseberry bushes hanging thick with fruit that suggests jam and tart in every delicious globule.
Isaac Newton began his life as a farm-boy who carried truck to a market town; Spinoza, the philosopher of Amsterdam, ground lenses for his livelihood; Watt, the inventor of the steam engine, was mechanic to the University of Glasgow; Porson, the great professor of Greek, was trained as a weaver; George Washington was a land surveyor; Benjamin Franklin a printer.
Hence most farmers utilize their high, wild, and mountain lands by keeping a small flock of sheep. But they are the outlaws of the farm and are seldom within bounds. They make many lively expeditions for the farm-boy, driving them out of mischief, hunting them up in the mountains, or salting them on the breezy hills.
I began to feel the loneliness of the farm-boy at evening, when the chores seem everlastingly the same, and the world so far away. What a tableful we were at supper: two long rows of restless heads in the lamplight, and so many eyes fastened excitedly upon Antonia as she sat at the head of the table, filling the plates and starting the dishes on their way.
One night, when the witness was absent in the country, Helene rose from her bed, and, approaching her fellow-servant's room, called several times in a sepulchral voice, ``Rose, Rose! That poor girl took fright, and hid under the bedclothes, trembling. Next day Rose complained to witness, who took his domestics to task. Helene pretended it was the farm-boy who had perpetrated the bad joke.
For a moment her terror was extreme. This changed to chagrin and vexation as Rover, the farmer's dog, ran to her hiding-place and fawned upon her. Having followed the farm-boy to the distant mill, the poor dog, growing weary with his long run, had fallen far behind.
She tied on her bonnet, and determined to make one more effort it should be with Fred this time. She followed the track of the lads, having first inquired of a farm-boy which road they had taken, and as they had loitered, and she walked very fast, she soon overtook them.
The hen-hawk that the farm-boy finds so difficult to approach with his gun will yet alight upon his steel trap fastened to the top of a pole in the fields. The rabbit that can be so easily caught in a snare or in a box-trap will yet conceal its nest and young in the most ingenious manner.
Soon afterward the motor overhauled and passed the battered stage lumbering along, bereft of its passengers, sunk to the level of carrying the baggage for its contemptuous aristocratic supplanter; and as Lee Virginia looked up at the driver, she caught the glance of a simple-minded farm-boy looking down at her.
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