Hope Farm Notes

HOPE FARM NOTES
BY HERBERT W. COLLINGWOOD
REPRINTED FROM THE RURAL NEW YORKER
NEW YORK HARCOURT, BRACE AND COMPANY 1921
COPYRIGHT, 1921, BY HARCOURT, BRACE AND COMPANY, INC.
THE QUINN & BODEN COMPANY RAHWAY, N. J.
To L. D. C. and A. F. C. who represent “ The Hen with one Chicken ” and The Chicken .
Most of these notes were originally printed in the Rural New-Yorker from week to week and covering a period of about 20 years. Many readers of that magazine have expressed the desire to have a collection of them in permanent form. It has been no easy task to make a selection, and I wish to acknowledge here the great help which I have received from my daughter, Ava F. Collingwood, in arranging this matter. It has been thought best to arrange the notes in chronological order. “A Hope Farm Sermon,” and “Grandmother” were originally printed in 1902. The others follow in the order of their original publication. The reader must understand that the children alluded to represent two distinct broods,—the second brood appearing just after the sketch entitled “Transplanting the Young Idea.” From the very first the object of these notes has been to picture simply and truthfully the brighter, cheerful side of Farm Life.

As a boy on a little Yankee farm I had a “stent” set out for me every day. During the Winter it was sawing and splitting wood. Our barn stood so that somehow on a Winter’s day one side of it faced the road, and it always seemed to be warm and sunny. The other was turned so it was always cold and frosty, with little if any sun. The hens, the cow and the sheep always made for the sunny side of the barn, which represented the comfortable and the bright side of life. The old gentleman who brought me up always put the woodpile on the frosty side of the barn. He argued that if the boy worked too much on the sunny side, he would stop to look at the passers-by, feel something of the joy of living, and stop his work to absorb a little of it. We were brought up to believe that labor was a curse, put upon us for our sins, a serious matter, a discipline and never a joy. When the boy worked on the frosty side, he must move fast in order to keep warm. He would not stop to loaf in the sun, he could not throw stones or practise baseball so long as he had to keep his mittens on to keep his fingers warm. Thus the argument was that the boy would accomplish more on the frosty side, and realize that labor represented the primal curse which somehow seemed to rest particularly hard upon the farmer. And so as a child I did my work and passed much of my life on the frosty side of the barn, silent and thoughtful, while the hens cackled and sang on the sunny side. It seemed strange to me that people could not see that the thing which made the hens lay would surely make the boy work.