[Illustration: SUGAR MAKING.]
In June came sheep-washing. The sheep were driven to the bay shore and secured in a pen, whence they were taken one by one into the bay, and their fleece well washed, after which they were let go. In a few days they were brought to the barn and sheared. The wool was then sorted; some of it being retained to be carded by hand, the rest sent to the mill to be turned into rolls; and when they were brought home the hum of the spinning wheel was heard day after day, for weeks, and the steady beat of the girls' feet on the floor, as they walked forward and backward drawing out and twisting the thread, and then letting it run upon the spindle. Of course the quality of the cloth depended on the fineness and evenness of the thread; and a great deal of pains was taken to turn out good work. When the spinning was done, the yarn was taken away to the weaver to be converted into cloth. As I have said before, there were no drones in a farmer's house then. While the work was being pushed outside with vigour, it did not stand still inside. The thrifty housewife was always busy. Beside the daily round of cares that continually pressed upon her, the winter had hardly passed away before she began to make preparations for the next. There were wild strawberries and raspberries to pickle and preserve, of which the family had their share as they came, supplemented with an abundance of rich cream and sugar; and so with the other fruits in their turn. There was the daily task, too, of milking, and the less frequent one of making butter and cheese. The girls were always out in the yard by sunrise, and soon came tripping in with red cheeks and flowing pails of milk; and at sunset the scene was repeated. The matron required no nurse to take care of the children; no cook to superintend the kitchen; no chamber-maid to make the beds and do the dusting. She had, very likely, one or two hired girls, neighbours' daughters. It was quite common then for farmers' daughters to go out to work when their services could be dispensed with at home. They were treated as equals, and took as much interest in the affairs of the family as the mistress herself. The fact of a girl going out to work did not affect her position. On the contrary, it was rather in her favour, and showed that she had some ambition about her. The girls, in those days, were quite as much at home in the kitchen as in the drawing-room or boudoir. They could do better execution over a wash tub than at a spinet. They could handle a rolling pin with more satisfaction than a sketch book; and if necessity required, could go out in the field and handle a fork and rake with practical results. They were educated in the country school house—
"Beside yon straggling fence that skirts the way,"
with their brothers, and not at a city boarding school. They had not so much as dreamed of fashion books, or heard of fashionable milliners. Their accomplishments were picked up at home, not abroad. And with all these drawbacks, they were pure, modest, affectionate. They made good wives; and that they were the best and most thoughtful mothers that ever watched over the well-being of their children, many remember full well.
Country life was practical and plodding in those days. Ambition did not lure the husbandman to days of luxury and ease, but to the accomplishment of a good day's work, and a future crowned with the fruits of honest industry. If the girls were prepared for the future by the watchful care and example of the mothers, so the boys followed in the footsteps of their fathers. They did not look upon their lives as burdensome. They did not feel that the occupation of a farmer was less honourable than any other. The merchant's shop did not possess more attraction than the barn. Fine clothes were neither so durable nor so cheap as home-made suits. Fashionable tailors did not exist to lure them into extravagance, and the town-bred dandy had not broken loose to taint them with his follies. Their aspirations did not lead into ways of display and idleness, or their association to bad habits. They were content to work as their fathers had done, and their aim was to become as exemplary and respected as they were. It was in such a school and under such masters that the foundation of Canadian prosperity was laid, and it is not gratifying to the thoughtful mind, after the survey of such a picture, to find that although our material prosperity in the space of fifty years has been marvellous, we have been gradually departing from the sterling example set us by our progenitors, for twenty years at least. "Dead flies" of extravagance have found their way into the "ointment" of domestic life, and their "savour" is keenly felt. In our haste to become rich, we have abandoned the old road of honest industry. To acquire wealth, and to rise in the social scale, we have cast behind us those principles which give tone and value to position. We are not like the Israelites who longed for the "flesh pots" they had left behind in Egypt; yet when we look around it is difficult to keep back the question put by the Ecclesiast, "What is the cause that the former days were better than these?" and the answer we think is not difficult to find. Our daughters are brought up now like tender plants, more for ornament than use. The practical lessons of life are neglected for the superficial. We send our sons to college, and there they fly from the fostering care of home; they crowd into our towns and cities— sometimes to rise, it is true, but more frequently to fall, and to become worthless members of society. Like the dog in the fable, we ourselves have let the substance drop, while our gaze has been glamoured by the shadow.
Early in July the haying began. The mowers were expected to be in the meadow by sunrise; and all through the day the rasp of their whetstones could be heard, as they dexterously drew them with a quick motion of the hand, first along one side of the scythe and then the other; after which they went swinging across the field, the waving grass falling rapidly before their keen blades, and dropping in swathes at their side. The days were not then divided off into a stated number of working hours. The rule was to begin with the morning light and continue as long as you could see. Of course men had to eat in those days as well as now, and the blast of the old tin dinner-horn fell on the ear with more melodious sound than the grandest orchestra to the musical enthusiast. Even "Old Gray," when I followed the plough, used to give answer to the cheerful wind of the horn by a loud whinny, and stop in the furrow, as if to say, "There now, off with my harness, and let us to dinner." If I happened to be in the middle of the field, I had considerable trouble to get the old fellow to go on to the end.
I must say a few words in this place about "Old Gray." Why he was always called "Old Gray" is more than I know. His colour could not have suggested the name, for he was a bright roan, almost a bay. He was by no means a pretty animal, being raw-boned, and never seeming to be in first-rate condition; but he was endowed with remarkable sagacity and great endurance, and was, moreover, a fleet trotter. When my father began the work for himself he was a part of his chattels, and survived his master several years. Father drove him twice to Little York one winter, a distance of over one hundred and fifty miles, accomplishing the trip both times inside of a week. He never would allow a team to pass him. It was customary in those days, particularly with youngsters in the winter, to turn out and run by, and many such races I have had; but the moment a team turned out of the track to pass "Old Gray," he was off like a shot, and you might as well try to hold a locomotive with pins as him with an ordinary bit. He was skittish, and often ran away. On one occasion, when I was very young, he ran off with father and myself in a single waggon. We were both thrown out, and, our feet becoming entangled in the lines, we were dragged some distance. The wheel passed over my head, and cut it so that it bled freely, but the wound was not serious. My father was badly hurt. After a while we started for home, and before we reached it the old scamp got frightened at a log, and set off full tilt. Again, father was thrown out, and I tipped over on the bottom of the waggon. Fortunately, the shafts gave way, and let him loose, when he stopped. Father was carried home, and did not leave the house for a long time. I used to ride the self-willed beast to school in the winter, and had great sport, sometimes, by getting boys on behind me, and, when they were not thinking, I would touch "Old Gray" under the flank with my heel, which would make him spring as though he were shot, and off the boys would tumble in the snow. When I reached school I tied up the reins and let him go home. I do not think he ever had an equal for mischief, and for the last years we had him we could do nothing with him. He was perpetually getting into the fields of grain, and leading all the other cattle after him. We used to hobble him in all sorts of ways, but he would manage to push or rub down the fence at some weak point, and unless his nose was fastened down almost to the ground by a chain from his head to his hind leg, he would let down the bars, or open all the gates about the place. There was not a door about the barn but he would open, if he could get at the latch, and if the key was left in the granary door he would unlock that. If left standing he was sure to get his head-stall off, and we had to get a halter made specially for him. He finally became such a perpetual torment that we sold him, and we all had a good cry when the old horse went away. He was upwards of twenty-five years old at this time. How much longer he lived I cannot say. I never saw him afterward.
[Illustration: RUNNING BY.]
As soon as the sun was well up, and our tasks about the house over, our part of this new play in the hayfield began, and with a fork or long stick we followed up the swathes and spread them out nicely, so that the grass would dry. In the afternoon, it had to be raked up into winrows— work in which the girls often joined us—and after tea one or two of the men cocked it up, while we raked the ground clean after them. If the weather was clear and dry it would be left out for several days before it was drawn into the barn or stacked; but often it was housed as soon as dry.
Another important matter which claimed the farmer's attention at this time was the preparation of his summer-fallow for fall wheat. The ground was first broken up after the spring sowing was over, and about hay time the second ploughing had to be done, to destroy weeds, and get the land in proper order. In August the last ploughing came, and about the first of September the wheat was sown. It almost always happened, too, that there were some acres of woodland that had been chopped over for fire wood and timber, to be cleaned up. Logs and bush had to be collected into piles, and burned. On new farms this was heavy work. Then the timber was cut down, and ruthlessly given over to the fire. Logging bees were of frequent occurrence, when the neighbours turned out with their oxen and logging chains, and, amid the ring of the axe and the shouting of drivers and men with their handspikes, the great logs were rolled one upon another into huge heaps, and left for the fire to eat them out of the way. When the work was done, all hands proceeded to the house, grim and black as a band of sweeps, where, with copious use of soap and water, they brought themselves back to their normal condition, and went in and did justice to the supper prepared for them.