whispering, and the teacher sends them home. Thomas stays around the school-house, hoping that somehow he will be forgiven. Jim runs right home and then right back again. When he comes into the room 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," and, with a laugh, the teacher allows Jim to stay. He was very clever at this age; and not infrequently he would go to Sunday-school with the teacher and would 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, and then Jim's superior knowledge would come into play, and he would gravely inform them, and always with accuracy. Thus the winter passes away, and the summer comes on all too soon.

With the opening leaves, the summer's work begins. The manure has to be hauled out and spread upon the land, then the land is plowed, harrowed mellow, and made ready for the corn. Farrowing out, or marking the earth for the corn, is a neat job, and often a boy has to ride the horse to keep him going 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

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a handful out at a time, and measure out fout grains with the thumb and the two front fingers, letting them slide off into the hill. The hills must be put the same distance apart, and the droppers generally walk in the farrow, planting the kernels just in front of the big toe, three feet being allowed between hills. The girls and boys run in their bare feet, and each one vies with the other in planting the hills regularly and with expedition. What jolly races we have had along the corn rows to beat the hoers out 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, and this must be done early, before the grass gets 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 the boys with their finger-nails worn into the quick, and the skin so thin on their fingers that the blood oozed through. In those days, before reapers and mowers were known, the smallest stone would spoil a scythe, and every one had to be carefully picked up and carried away or placed in little heaps, around which the scythe men could mow.

Planting potatoes, cultivating the corn to keep down the weeds, hoeing potatoes, weeding in the

garden, milking the cows, churning and buttermaking occupied the time until the grass was grown, and 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 brier, which causes 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, laborand sorrow" to him. Up at daylight to turn the grindstone for the cradle-scythes, out with the lark to bring in the cows and get the morning work done, be

fore the harvesters begin. Then following the reapers and binders, to gather 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 it never would ring, and 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. In the fall, "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 reopen their neglected books, for another season. And so the years fled their even course until 1846.