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around the school house, hoping that somehow he will be forgiven. Jim runs right home and then right back again. When he returns, the teacher says: "James, I thought I sent you home. Didn't I?

"Yes, ma'am," says Jim.

"Well, why didn't you go!

"I did go, I just got back." The teacher laughing, allows him to stay.

He was very clever at this age; and not infrequently he would go to Sunday-School with the teacher, and sit on the desk, and ask the boys Bible questions, such as these: "Who was the wisest man?" "Who was the meekest man?" "Who was in the whale's belly?" The boys did not know. Then Jim's superior knowledge would come into play, and he would gravely inform them, always with accuracy. Thus the Winter passes away, and the Summer comes almost too quickly.

With the opening leaves, the Summer's work begins. The manure hauled out and spread upon the land, which is then plowed, made mellow by harrowing, and prepared for the corn. Furrowing out, or marking the earth for the corn, is a neat job, and often a boy has to ride the horse to keep him straight. The dropping of the corn is always done by boys and girls. With a basket full of kernels on one arm, four grains at a time are taken out and put in a hill. Some

take a handful out at a time, and measure out four grains with the thumb and the two front fingers, letting them slide into the hill. The hills must be the same distance apart; and the droppers generally walk in the furrow, planting the kernels just in front of the big toe, and allowing three feet between the hills. The girls and boys are bare-footed; and each one vies with the other in planting the hills regularly and with expedition. What jolly races we have had along the cornrows to beat the hoers and have time to gather the raspberries, that grew in the fence-corners! Each corn-dropper is followed by a man with a hoe, who carefully covers up the seed, and grumbles incessantly, if the kernels are scattered too far apart.

After the corn-planting season comes the stonepicking from the land, that is to be mowed. This must be done early, before the grass grows so high as to conceal the smaller stones. To properly cleanse a piece of grass-land from stones is no small job; and often have we seen boys with their finger-nails worn into the quick, and with the skin so thin on their fingers, that the blood oozed through. In those days, before reapers and mowers were known, the smallest stones would spoil a scythe, and had to be carefully picked up and carried away, or placed in little heaps, around which the men could mow.

Planting potatoes, cultivating the corn to keep

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down the weeds, hoeing potatoes, weeding in the garden, milking the cows, and butter-making occupied the time, until the grass was grown. Then came the hay-making. Who, that has ever lived on a farm, will forget the jolly time, when the scythes were brought out, and the whet-stones rang against their blue-steel blades? What music was sweeter than the song of the mowers? And when the hay was turned to dry in the sun, we raked it into windrows for the pitchers. Then the wagon, with its wide ladders; the bright forks with their long handles; the fragrant odor of the grass, as it was pitched on the wagon, to be caught in our arms, and built into a long, wide, sugar-loaf overhanging the wheels; the sun shining, the meadow-larks singing, and our own little sweetheart adding her tender voice, as with nut-brown hands and disheveled hair she rakes the fragrant hay! It is always the province of a farm-boy to build the hay on the wagon; and often the little maid assisted, sometimes tramping with naked feet on a hidden briar, which caused her to scream gently, and necessitated a search for the nasty jagger.

The haying season is speedily followed by the grain-cutting. "The harvest is ripe," is a welcome announcement to the husbandman, but not always to the farmer's son, for it means "strength, labor and sorrow" for him. He must be up at daylight to turn the grindstone for the cradle-scythes, and out with the lark to bring in the cows and get the morning

work done, before the harvesters begin. Then follow the reapers and binders, gathering up the sheaves for the shocks, while the sun each hour grows hotter and hotter, until the light quivers with waves of heat. The bringing-out of the ten o'clock piece, the carrying of water for the thirsty men, and the toiling until the welcome dinner-bell rings! How often have we thought that it never would ring, and that the great, hot, red sun seemed to have been commanded by another Joshua to stand still in the sky! Then the sweet noon-rest under the trees, the renewal of labor, the long, hot afternoon, with night at last! What farmer-boy does not remember these days in his early life?

To James Garfield such life was pregnant with interest, engendered by duty. He was not an enthusiastic farmer, but he was an enthusiastic helper of his mother; and from the time he was able-he was always willing-he shouldered his full share of all the farm-work, finding his special province in the lighter labors of seed-time and harvest, and, in the Fall, in "chores" about the barn-house, until the Winter's snowy mantle covered the ground, and the district school-teacher summoned the boys and girls to re-open their neglected books, for another season.

1846.

And so the years passed until

T

CHAPTER IV.

"THE PIRATE'S OWN BOOK."

HERE was a wide difference in tempera

ment between the Garfield boys. Thomas,

the older brother, quiet and unambitious, aspired to nothing more than the honest, regular round of a farmer's life. James, the younger, was enterprising and ambitious. It is more than doubtful, if he ever intended to be a farmer; and, probably, from his earliest years, his brain was tenanted with visions of greatness. He had now become so expert in the use of tools, that he could, while yet a mere boy, make or build almost anything, and his talent as a carpenter was in constant demand. There was hardly a building or enterprise of any kind in the section of Ohio, where he lived, but bore some marks of his skill. He had a carpenter's bench; and on this he worked early and late, though his labor brought him but small financial return. The land on which the Garfields lived, was so poor that it yielded them but a scanty living; and James felt the necessity of "working out," as it was called, to increase the limited resources of the family. In the village and among the neighbors, early and late, he sought odd jobs

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