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Updated: May 4, 2025
Submit whispered to her father, and the old man merely poured a double portion of rum into the cider flip, with which the huskers were being regaled, and soon all went prosperously again. For rum in those good old days was recognized as equally the accompaniment of toil and recreation, and therefore had a double claim to the attention of huskers.
Then there was a race among the huskers for the fence, the girls promising that he whose row was first husked out, should sit at the head of the table, and be called King of the Corn-field.
Their tails streamed sidewise with the force of the wind, which had a wild and lonesome sound, as it swept across the sear stretches of the corn. The stalks towered far above the heads of the huskers, but did little to temper the onslaught of the blast.
The laden orchards, with men climbing long ladders, and boys in the topmost branches looking in the distance like huge squirrels, were pleasant objects to the mountain ramblers. Huskers could be discerned in the nearer cornfields, and the great yellow ears glistened momentarily in the light, as they were tossed into golden heaps.
Friends, meeting or parting, drank to perpetuate their friendship. Huskers around the corn-stack, workmen in the field, master and apprentice in the shop, passed the brown jug from lip to lip. The lawyer drank before writing his brief or pleading at the bar; the minister, while preparing his sermon or before delivering it from the pulpit.
I became, in short, the gangling farmer-boy my aunt had known, scourged with chilblains and bashfulness, my hands cracked and sore from the corn husking. I sat again before her parlour organ, fumbling the scales with my stiff, red fingers, while she, beside me, made canvas mittens for the huskers. The next morning, after preparing my landlady for a visitor, I set out for the station.
The corn could be cut earlier, thus leaving the ground free to be prepared for the succeeding crop of fall wheat or late vegetables. During stormy weather, after this slower curing process was complete, a jolly army of huskers invaded the barns. The ripe corn, free from husk, was carefully assorted and stored in the ventilated bins prepared for it.
It was a frosty night, and the faces of the huskers showed very red above the knitted woollen comforters which wrapped their throats. Before each man there was a small pile of corn, still in the blade, and this was replenished when it began to dwindle by a band of workers in the moonlight beyond the open windows.
I say, though, I've got the money you wanted; we'll fix the matter after supper." The rustling of the corn-stalks recommenced, and the tented lines of shocks slowly fell as the huskers worked their way over the brow of the hill, whence the ground sloped down into a broad belt of shade, cast by the woods in the bottom.
Some of the huskers, looking up, caught sight of Desire and Jonathan at the door, and by a telegraphic system of whispers and nudges, the information was presently carried to Israel Goodrich. "Glad to see ye. Come right in," he shouted in a broad, cheery voice. "More the merrier's, the sayin is. Glad to see ye. Glad to see ye. Look's kinder neighborly."
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