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Updated: June 28, 2025
He could not strike a decent chord, but he had a good ear; whenever he screwed up a string, he was careful to screw it back again exactly where it was before, so the instrument at any rate was none the worse. I got into talk with one of the farm-hands, a young fellow. He got two hundred Kroner a year, he said, besides his board.
In town he drank several glasses of beer and stood about in Ben Head's saloon crowded on Saturday evenings with visiting farm-hands. Songs were sung and glasses thumped on the bar. At ten o'clock father drove home along a lonely country road, made his horse comfortable for the night and himself went to bed, quite happy in his position in life.
"You are my guests, and I shall not allow you to leave us in that manner. Besides, you would probably find the gates closed down there, for I do not think they expected you so soon." During this interview, the servant who had received the travellers had returned with her milk-pail; behind her, the other farm-hands, men and women, arranged themselves silently round the table.
Like a mushroom it came up overnight. The farm-hands on their way to work halted to look it over; the oystermen and clammers on the way to their boats loitered near the spot to inspect it, and by nine o'clock most of the boys and girls within a mile of the place spread the news broadcast that there was an actors' show in town.
It was Saturday evening, and the young May moon would furnish sufficient light without revealing identity too clearly. About a score of young fellows and hired farm-hands of the ruder sort came riding and trudging to Weeks' barn, where there was a barrel of cider on tap.
I hurried by the cottage of the misborn Neill boys. It was empty, and they were grown into fat, lazy farm-hands. I saw the home of the Hickmans, but Albert, with his stooping shoulders, had passed from the world.
It seemed a good deal of money to put on an old farm-house for farm-hands, but it proved one of the best investments at Four Oaks, for it kept the men contented and cheerful workers. On Monday I was out by ten o'clock, armed with a surveyor's chain. Thompson had provided a lot of stakes, and we ran the lines, more or less straight, in general accord with my sketch plan.
The old man was easy to work with; he often came out to us in the woods and chatted and made jokes, and as I never joked in return, he took me, no doubt, for a dull dog, but a steady fellow. He began sending me on errands now, with letters to and from the post. There were no children on the place, no young folk at all save the maids and one of the farm-hands, so the evenings fell rather long.
It may well be asked by one who has not carefully considered the matter: "What has become of all those skilled farm-hands that used to be on the old plantations? Where are those wonderful cooks we hear about, where those exquisitely trained house servants, those cabinet makers, and the jacks-of-all-trades that were the pride of the South?" This is easily answered, they are mostly dead.
Mistress Putnam knew that a couple of farm-hands were at work in a distant field, who would be back at sundown; and there were so few strollers at that time, that no farmer thought of bolting up his doors and windows when he went to meeting, or to see a neighbor. The way home across the fields was a good deal nearer than to go by the road, as the latter made quite an angle.
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