Vietnam or Thailand ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !


Every county has its Theocritus who sings the nearest creek, the bloom of the may-apple, the squirrel on the stake-and-rider fence, the rabbit in the corn, the paw-paw thicket where fruit for the gods lures farm boys on frosty mornings in golden autumn.

"We're on our land now," he said, as they left the hayfield behind. "It runs right across country over the roughest parts. Just you wait and see." As on the first day, he turned aside from the clay-pit and worked through the woods to the left, passing the first spring and jumping the horses over the ruined remnants of the stake-and-rider fence. From here on, Dede was in an unending ecstasy.

There grew the tasseled milkweed with its bursting silken pods, And the stately, waving branches of the yellow goldenrod; The mullein stalk and asters, with teasels growing dense, God's garden, in the angle of the stake-and-rider fence. It was homely, but I loved it, and I wouldn't trade, would you? For all the hothouse beauties that a florist ever knew.

Bob Holliday and Riley, the fleetest of foot, climbed over the high stake-and-rider fence into Betts's corn-field, and cut off a diagonal to prevent Jack's getting back toward the school-house.

There was never a farmer who kept cleaner fields, or handsomer stake-and-rider fence than he; or had earlier corn, or a larger woodpile; yet he did love a hunt more dearly than a venison pie; he caught fish from pools where others received not a nibble; and he enjoyed a leisure day, and a feast, and a fine story.

There were sheep grazing there and it might be that a sheep had died. Buzzards were notoriously fond of sheep, when dead. Or, if they were pointed for the swamp, he must satisfy himself exactly what part of the swamp it was. He was at the stake-and-rider fence when a mare came jogging down the road, drawing a rig with a man in it. At sight of the squire in the field the man pulled up.

There the squirrel scolds and chatters as he runs along the rail, And you hear the rain-crow calling, and the whistle of the quail; And the catbird, and the blue jay, scold with vigor most intense, As they build among the branches by the stake-and-rider fence.

Daylight watched it admiringly as he rode on to the head of the meadow. Here he startled up a many-pronged buck, that seemed to soar across the meadow, and to soar over the stake-and-rider fence, and, still soaring, disappeared in a friendly copse beyond. Daylight's delight was unbounded. It seemed to him that he had never been so happy.

"He told me of riding to mill with his father one very hot day. As they drove along the hot road they saw a boy sitting on the top rail of an old-fashioned stake-and-rider worm fence. When they came close they saw that the boy was reading, and had not noticed their approach.

At the base of the knolls he encountered a tumble-down stake-and-rider fence. From the look of it he judged it must be forty years old at least the work of some first pioneer who had taken up the land when the days of gold had ended. The woods were very thick here, yet fairly clear of underbrush, so that, while the blue sky was screened by the arched branches, he was able to ride beneath.