United States or South Sudan ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Simpkins in the buckboard with the watermelons. She could not walk around the "carry"; she must go by the direct road, and of course she couldn't go alone. There was no help for it, and Mr. Meigs, looking as cheerful as an undertaker in a healthy season, got down from his seat and trudged back.
I invited everybody that came to the house to go and see my watermelon. They looked it over and said pleasant things about it. When I was a boy people used to treat children and watermelons with a like solicitude. Both were a subject for jests and both produced similar reactions in the human countenance.
They brought us flowers; they brought us watermelons and other fruits, and sometimes jugs and pails of milk all of which we greatly appreciated.
It was twice seen on the roof of the stable where that sour-faced, evil-eyed old mumbler, Jean Beaugrand, kept his horse, Sans Souci a beast that, spite of its hundred years or more, could and did leap every wall in Detroit, even the twelve-foot stockade of the fort, to steal corn and watermelons, and that had been seen in the same barn, sitting at a table, playing seven-up with his master, and drinking a liquor that looked like melted brass.
But I didn't tell him of my talk with Sylvester about the unpardonable sin," the old gentleman added, smiling. "That was hardly a proper subject for gossip." Every spring at the old farm we used to put in a row of hills for cantaloupes and another for watermelons.
These goods, shipped from Mackinaw, at first came by canoes or bateaux, and in the later period by vessel, to a leading post, were there redivided and sent to the various trading posts. The Indians, returning from the hunting grounds to their villages in the spring, set the squaws to making maple sugar, planting corn, watermelons, potatoes, squashes, etc., and a little hunting was carried on.
Hovering about the hem of the crowd were the sunburned young men in their Sunday best, still clinging fast to the hands of the young women. Bands blared "Columbia, Gem of the Ocean." Fakirs planted their stands in the way, selling pain-killers and ague cures, watermelons and lemonade, Jugglers juggled, and beggars begged. Jim said that there were sixteen thousand people in that grove.
"I don't suppose there is any greater tax on human ingenuity than to carry three watermelons!" he remarked. "The human structure is ideally adapted to the transportation of two it can be done with comfort; but when a body tackles three he finds that nature herself is opposed to the proceeding! Well, I am going back for a bee-gum I saw in a fence corner.
The beans have come up ill, and I planted a fresh supply only the day before yesterday. We have watermelons in good advancement, and muskmelons also within three or four days. I set out some tomatoes last night, also some capers. It is my purpose to plant some more corn at the end of the month, or sooner.
But the days soon flew by; and even while the young workers were stumping over the field, they consoled themselves with visions of gigantic ripe watermelons and mammoth pumpkins and squashes that would regale their eyes before long. For, following the example of most Kansas farmers, they had stuck into many of the furrows with the corn the seeds of these easily grown vines.
Word Of The Day