Swords and Plowshares/Farm Pictures

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Farm Pictures

IWHEN others go for excitement to the city hall, exchange, or club,I go to the farmyard, the heart and center of the life of the farm.From it go forth in the morning the laborers and teams and machines and cattle, whose circulation gives organic life to the domain.At night they flow back again, and here is stored the product of every acre, and here the cows are milked and the butter is made. Everything about us has the impress of real life and is full of live interest, even when I find no one at hand ready to discuss the crops or the weather.

Now they are loading hay on wagons to take to the station.One after another the bales are rolled out of the barn; a strong young man fastens them on an iron hook and weighs them on hanging scales.Then he calls off the weight to the boss, who writes it down on a shingle, and afterward, when the bale is lowered to the ground, the lad paints the number of pounds with a brush on one of the slats that are bound round it.Thereupon two men jerk the bales into the cart with hands and knees in unison.Yonder three other wagons wait their turn.The sun shines hot through the cool morning air; the near gray horse is nibbling weeds on the left; a fox-terrier lies panting in the shade of the load, alert for rats.Now the wagon with its broad-tired wheels moves along heavy laden over the oozy carpet of hay on the ground, and another draws up.

Is there anything so vital as this in court-house, or public square, or ball-room?This is the real thing, for which at best they stand.They are faint reflections of this genuine life of man between the sun and the soil.The heart of the farm is the true heart of society. III AM paying my morning call to the cow-stable.The big Jersey bull resists and jerks back his thick-set head when I put my hand in the deep dent between his eyes, and the ring in his nose clicks against the edge of his manger.As I pass along the rows of heads, stopping before each one, the yearlings touch my hand with their moisture-beaded noses and run out their tongues over their toothless upper jaws and gently rasp my fingers with them.The brindle cow is licking her wet bull calf, dropped just ten minutes ago, as it lies on the straw, while she utters a plaintive little cry of astonishment and fear at my approach.I peer into the eyes of all of them in search of something lurking behind.I see in these dull bovine pupils, as through dense smoked glasses, the deep, distant, smoldering Intelligence.It is there—feeble, mysterious, so far away—just as I see it through the dusk of my own soul.We are all so vague, so unconcentrated, so somnolent, so vegetable!When the Intelligence once emerges, when it flames instead of smolders, when it flashes from the East even unto the West—then eyes and souls will have become transparent, and truth will have reclaimed the uttermost frontiers. IIIAS we walk down the long, low sheds of the stock farm, with rows of box stalls on either hand, the gentle racers come, full of curiosity, to the windows and put out their beautiful heads with ears to the front, while they sniff the air with mobile nostrils.How friendly they are as we pat their warm noses and listen to the groom who recites their good points and pedigrees!They have seen nothing but the loving side of man and know us as we should be.The brood-mares in their shaggy winter coats are on in the paddock in the snow.The nine-day-old colt, dropped out of season, is in the heated stable with her dam, and runs up to us like a pet dog.They are almost human, these graceful, affectionate creatures, and the eight-months' black colt, the pride of the farm (who has a mile record already to his credit and is led out every day for the owner to feast his eyes upon), seems to know his high birth and breeding.

O horse, brother and companion and equal of huntsman and soldier—Nobler than lion or tiger or polar bear—Has your strenuous master, astride of you, ever bethought himself that you are the handiwork of fright and timidity? Product of centuries long of running away, you surpass the products of ages of combat.With no weapons but your Parthian heels, you have acquired what claws and teeth could never have won for you.Survival of the fleetest, you have outstripped the survivals of the most belligerent.In you, cowardice throws down the gauntlet to courage, and nervousness to nerve. IVWHAT are you thinking of, my stalwart lad, as you plant Indian corn in the next row to me and cover it with your hoe?I very much fear that, if your mind is working at all, you are thinking of your twenty dollars wage at the end of the month and of the instalment due on your bicycle, which must come out of it.If it were your own field, you would probably be calculating the market value of a bushel next winter.You see how it is you are not looking straight at your work, but rather at what comes back to you from it.As you walk along, putting your hand deftly into your bag, your thoughts wander from your task to the return from it.Instead of looking at your work, you are really looking behind you.

Eyes right! Observe the seeds of corn as they fall from your hand.Think of the harvest.Think of sturdy men and women, East and West, feasting on the corn cake and Indian meal and hominy.Think of useful cattle and hard-worked horses relishing the sweet ears.Be proud that you sustain scores of lives, and know more of real honor and honesty than all the bustling men in town.

There are great possibilities in our corn-field, if you would but explore them.Look at your work, and you will see further into the world than your inch-deep planting.Nay, you may even get a glimpse at the very secret of things.All the revolution that mankind is yearning for is just this: to make men look in the direction of their work, to emphasize service and not wages, to ask How much good will it do? and not Does it pay?Eyes right! and you will do your share in setting the world straight.And corn will be worth more in those days, too,For it will be a message of good will, and to eat it will be a feast of thankfulness. VTHE buckwheat-field is a-buzz with bees, and here and there dusky butterflies dot the snowy expanse.Oh, the white-green buckwheat!As I gaze at the curling edge of the field from where I stand in the close-mown meadow, and watch the afternoon sunlight melting through, it looks like a line of emerald foam-topped billows, and the bees and butterflies are playing in the spray.The air is heavy with the prophetic smell of dark-brown honey.Behold a land flowing with milk and honey indeed! It is more than a figure of speech, for there it lies stretched out before me.Perhaps I might draw some lesson from it, even as the bees suck out its very essence.But no; to-day the buckwheat-field is enough, just as it lies there, green and white in the sun. VIIN the old meadow-unshorn now these three years, its locks were so thin—Little birch-trees are springing up here and there with pendent, tremulous leaves, their tops almost as high as my knee.Long ago this was all woodland, and we still call it, in good old doubtful Dutch, the "Buccobush" (the birchwood). All these years the forest has lain in wait under the ground watching its opportunity.All these years it has let the plowshare glide over its head.All these years it has submitted to the tiresome round of Indian corn, oats, winter grain, and the half dozen seasons of grass.But now, as soon as a vulnerable breach appears in the toilsome tidy years, it rushes in helter-skelter.The wilderness is the hungry residuary devisee of all our estatesThe forest lurks impatient under every meadow.

And in us, beneath the cultivated surface, is there nor a wild birchwood, too, thrusting its shoots up to the light?Is the savage in us buried so very deep!What is there between us, O wild mother earth, bot a thin partition of labored culture? VIITHE farm-hand has finished his evening chores, and is walking homeward around the comer of the barn in the mud.You can hear the horses crunching their outs inside almost as loud as a grist-mill.The other men have already gone, and he alone is in sight. But no, down the hill comes the owner of the estate.He calls the laborer and holds out his wages to him, for it is the last day of the month.The man approaches, sheepishly, takes the roll of bills, and thrusts it into his waistcoat pocket with his thumb.He has no manners, and neither touches his hat nor says "Thank you" for the money.But then his employer has no manners either, and does not touch his hat nor thank him for his month of hard toil.

What are they thinking of, these two men the rich man, fresh and clean in the best of riding-clothes, and the workman, in his stained red shirt-sleeves and top-boots covered with manure?The laborer is thinking, "What a lucky fellow I am, with a steady job all the year round, my wages always paid on the day, and a pretty easy boss to get on with in the bargain!"The employer is thinking, "Why should this man be working for a loafer like me and not I for him?His days are as full, as mine are empty, of usefulness.I ought to be ashamed to masquerade through life as his superior.Why was I born into such a topsyturvy world?" VIIITHE funeral of a farm-laborer's young wife is passing over the hill.The dominie drives ahead in his buggy.Then comes the hearse, followed by half a dozen carriages.In the first sit the bereaved mother and husband.She is weeping, heart-broken, yet thinking what a fine funeral it is and what an impression it will make on the village.He is recalling sadly the history of his two years of married life, the dead baby, the empty home, all the little plans for a lifetime so soon brought to an end.Now he must sell the furniture they were so proud of and board again with the farmer.He rubs his red eyes with his awkward, wrinkled black glove, and leaves a dark purple streak on his cheek.

I had not expected to see a funeral, and yet it fits in with everything else, as all things natural do.It is the first day with a touch of Spring in it.Spring has really arrived, and I have come out as a reporter, note-book in hand, to interview her as a distinguished stranger.I turn away from the black procession and I see the distant mountains as snowy still as the Alps.Here around as the snow has almost disappeared, but to the north of each clump of spruce-trees it lies like a white shadow.
The ducks have rediscovered the pond, hidden until last week under a foot or more of ice and snow.Now and then an enterprising frog croaks feebly.White horsehair lies about the stable like little tufts of fur.There is a tinge of green in the grass on the south slope of the lawn.In the woods there is scarcely a sign of the coming change, and last year's dead oak leaves still hang on bravely.In the orchard robins and song-sparrows are singing, and one bluebird has fallen, like a drop of sky, into a bare apple-tree.I hear the woodpecker at work at his xylophone, picking out the best instrument he can find.Beyond the road a farm-hand is drilling oats, with the long summer stretching out before him.A pair of black butterflies, their wings tipped with yellow, are flying and flirting in the warm sunshine.The air is hazy, and the smell of burning leaves and brush makes me drowsy.The sun is crying "Wake up!" and the earth is yawning and stretching and saying, "It isn't quite time to get up yet."Nevertheless the young life is pulsing everywhere.Love, hope, and strength are all alive just below the surface.

The carriages are coming back from the funeral.The mother has stopped crying and is putting her hat straight.The husband has just made up his mind not to sell the furniture—he will store it instead. Who knows? Some day it may come in handy.And the wife over the hill—if she sees them she is not angry.She is smiling, wherever she is, for there is love and hope and strength and Spring for her also. IXIT is September. They are at work in the woods getting out stone for the new barn.One man leans with his back against the great rock holding a drill between his legs with both hands.Two men, standing one on each side, bring down their sledge-hammers with wonderful precision on the head of the drill, which he turns round mechanically at each stroke.The "chink-chink-chink" echoes through the woods.The men talk carelessly of this and that, unmindful of their skill and usefulness.Broken stones lie about their feet, and there is a pile of them over there waiting for the cart to curry them away.The rock is split here and there; and where it has been torn away we see the flattened root of a tottering black birch-tree, which has been swelling imprisoned in a crevice for years.
The arms and faces of the men are sunburned, and their clothing is worn and discolored.There is a faint smell of powder, sweat, and birch bark in the air.

In the neighboring held a sturdy lad is plowing with a team of bays.He guides the plow with both hands, the reins passing round his waist.The plowshare twists out a long ribbon of green sod, and deposits it, with the shiny brown side up, in the next furrow.A score of crow-blackbirds strut about over the fresh upturned soil.

Not far away is the big house, where on the veranda well-dressed, able-bodied men and women are sipping superfluous tea and talking of idle journeys and novels and pastimes.

And on them all the all-forgiving sun is shining. XWHAT a grand game golf would be on these October days (so I think to myself as I stride up the hill toward the putting-green near the half-yellowed oak-grove at the top)—What a grand game golf would be if that man over the fence there on the left would only stop plowing for winter grain!
Now we have holed in, and my companion in pink shirt and knickerbockers is driving from the tee.With an easy sweep he sends his ball skimming miraculously through the air, and it lands well beyond the bunker far below us.I follow, but I still have that wretched plowman in the corner of my eye, and my ball bumps lamely down the slope.If I am to go on playing golf we must put up a seven-foot wall around the links.

There are twenty-two people indulging in the game this morning besides me (I have just counted them—men and women and boys and girls), and almost all have sharp eyes.Is it not rather odd that not one of them has seen that plowman—that, in fact, in the whole course of their existence they have never seen a live plowman?They may look at him as be stumbles along behind his plow, but they do not see him.They will dine sumptuously to-night on the bounty which he and his fellows provide.They will perhaps go through the form of thanking God for what they receive, but they will forget to give thanks to the plowman, without whomGod would quite justly have left them to starve. Their only sensation will be the comfortable one of having passed a profitable day in chasing a rubber ball.They will not think of the caddies whom we have beguiled and perverted into believing that golf is the serious business of life.They give no thought, as they read the name of "Silvertown" on the white balls, to the toilers in East London slums whom they allure into useless labor, nor to the ever-increasing number of lives wasted in ministering to their idle ness and luxury, and the ever-growing burden which they are heaping upon the plowman's stooping back."Live on other people's labor"—that is the device of our nobility.Knowing this, how can I look the plowman in the face, cleek in hand, without blushing?

Yet we forsooth are the custodians of honor!The vulgar plowman, who feeds fifty of us for a bare living for himself, he is ignorant of honor.He may be low enough to steal apples from our trees (which he planted and for which he cares), and in case of need he might be willing to beg.Naturally we, whose whole life is nourished by what we steal and beg from him, look down upon him, while he, poor idiot, very likely looks up at us.Oh, for a little sense of humor in this ridiculous world, to laugh away the shams and put us out of countenance!
The sight of a man at his plow should be enough to paralyze every right hand that grasps a golf-club, and with it the fruit of another's toil. XIΟVER the quiet afternoon pasture, where the cows are browsing with their leader at their head, each knowing the place to which her courage and character entitle her;Over the flock of sheep on the other side of the rough stone wall, where the gray fleeces cluster thick to keep out the November north wind;Over the peaceful barnyard yonder, where the calves are waiting for the tardy pail and the chickens are scratching for their supper—Over it all (as I gather nuts under the clump of hickory-trees in the corner of the cow-pasture, where the sluggish brook winds its way and the sun's rays slant brightly through the trunks)—Over it all I see the dull, inevitable shadow of the butcher's knife.

All nature round me is beautiful and suggestive and full of interest.The narrow path of the woodchuck in the grass leading to his back door and looking almost as if it had been made by a single wheel; The wisp of hay still clinging to the stray apple-tree where the hay loads passed four months ago;The half torpid bees haunting the sunshine in the gar den and kissing the chrysanthemums a last good-by;The great procession of cawing crows pursuing their regular avenue in the sky to the southwest. with bands of stragglers behind—How full it all is of life and mystery and romance and solace!But it can not conceal the butcher's knife looming above the farm and every farm.

The black cow is lowing uneasily toward the barnyard, and her calf, taken from her after a few hours of wonderful common life, answers in a high note.The calves are sucking each other's ears for want of their dams, and one of them has already one ear sucked to half the size of the other.In the pigsty, in enforced filth and idleness, the pigs will pass a wintry night in two inches of freezing slime, without a dry spot to lie on.Visions of cattle-trains, foodless and waterless, in frigid cold and torrid heat for weary days;Of cattle-ships in storms, the maimed and dying thrown together;Of herds of steers, benumbed and starving in the snows of the Northwest;Of huge abattoirs, with hardened men and boys in bloody aprons and noble animals crazed with fright;
Of little slaughter-houses in the country, with their heaps of offal and vile stenches polluting the meadows—Visions such as these hang over the farm.

Death is natural, I own, and without it this world might be cursed with life;But when it comes at the edge of the cold and sharpened steel, at the behest of man's perverted appetite and cruel will, and strikes the young and lusty and vigorous;When death is made the chief end of life, and life becomes the handmaid of death, and nature is prostituted to the express manufacture of fattened corpses—Then is death hideous indeed.And over all the autumn beauties of sight and scent and feeling broods lowering the shadow of the needless butcher's knife. XIIMORE beautiful than the rosy sunsets of the Nile, mixing sand and sky in far-away mysteries of splendor;More beautiful than the foggy lagoons of the North, with their delicate and subtile tones of gray;More beautiful than dark ravine and snowy waterfall— Is to me the sight of the hen in the barnyard, swelling with protection and pride over her new-hatched chicks as they peer out from under her feathers;Or the cat in the kitchen licking her soft kittens, whose eyes are not yet open;Or the young wife, merged in her baby, as she gazes upon it and presses it to her bosom.

How hospitably Nature puts forth all her best for the reception of these little immigrants from the invisible as they land upon our foreign shore!"It is a world of love," she tells them, and for a time they find it so.Only as we grow older, she seems to become disappointed in us, and weans us from her and her primal loving purpose;But still she is never discouraged, and she turns with the same extended hand and the same warm, miraculous welcome to the ever-arriving host of little wanderers.

Dear Nature, I have well observed your friendliness to the stranger, and, knowing you as I do, how can I fear the voyage which you will call upon me to make into the great Unknown?I am satisfied that I shall find you there, even as I found you here, awaiting me with motherly, outstretched arms;Your first look, at any rate, will be one of eager, affectionate greeting.