Others got an idea that I had a coöperative colony and all they had to do was to come and plant themselves on the land. I never intended to organize a colony but I did invite some families to enjoy the summer on the farm.
I shall not ask as many next year for I have no talent as a manager and it takes more management than I imagined to look after even half a dozen families.
I had a number of parties from the city during the summer—the largest being from the Church of the Ascension and the Cosmopolitan Church. From Ascension Church came a young men's club on Decoration day. I introduced the boys to their first experience in archery.
The people from the Cosmopolitan Church came on a Sunday and I took them over the hill to call on my friends, the Franciscan monks, of the society of the Atonement. The Franciscans are my nearest neighbours on the north and on the south is my neighbour Mr. Epstein, a Russian Jewish farmer.
From the north we have had an intellectual and moral fellowship and from the south the comradeship of the soil.
To Mr. Epstein's bull we are indebted for the element of excitement—a very necessary element if one could get it in any sort of orderly arrangement.
The bull objected to Mr. Epstein interfering in what might be called his (the bull's) family affairs. He tossed his owner into the air three times one afternoon in my meadow and, but for the timely interference of a dog, would have gathered the farmer to his fathers. Several of our community saw the incident, but the vibrations had a more enervating effect than even those around the woodpile, and being armed only with the first law of nature they left the honours of the incident to the dog.
The following Sunday morning I saw a crowd in Mr. Epstein's orchard. It looked like a small county fair. A cow doctor had been imported to perform an operation on the bull. Mr. Epstein and his muzik, Michael, almost came to blows in trying to decide which of them should put the yoke on the bull's neck. No decent farmer will stand aloof in such a crisis: so I threw my coat off and offered my services. The patient made serious objections to me, but permitted the yoke to be adjusted by a day labourer named Harvey Outhouse.
This Holstein aristocrat had a terrible come-down. He used to stalk around as if he owned the earth, but now he is a common "hewer of wood and drawer of water" like ourselves.
I see him occasionally, now, pulling a heavy load of stones or hay past our place as meekly and quiet as the dull ox by his side, and involuntarily I exclaim: "How are the mighty fallen!"