The Fall of the Year

by Dallas Lore Sharp

such a sight as this: Have you ever seen a sunset more gorgeous than any artist could paint and any rich man could buy? Ever had a smell of trailing arbutus that no perfumer could equal, that all the money in the world could not create? Old Midas had a golden touch and turned his daughter into gold. Was he not more than willing to be the poorest man in his kingdom if only he might be rid of the fatal touch, be a natural man again and have his loving little daughter a natural child again? To be your natural selves, and to enjoy your beautiful natural world is better than to be anything else, or to have anything else, in the world.

CHAPTER VI

TO THE TEACHER

We hear so much of the drudgery of farm life, of its dreariness, and meagre living that this chapter, aside from its picture of cheer and plenty, should be made the text for a good deal of comment upon the many other phases of farm life that make for the fullest kind of existence; namely, the independence of the farmer; the vast and interesting variety of his work; his personal contact with domestic animals, his fruit-trees, garden, and fields of grain; his intimate acquaintance with the weather; his great resourcefulness in meeting insect plagues, blights, and droughts; his out-of-door life that makes him strong and long-lived, etc., etc.

If you are a country teacher it is one of your great missions to show the boys that they should stay upon the farm, or rather that the farm is a good place to stay on for life; if you are a city teacher it should be your mission to head many a boy countryward for life with the understanding that it requires more sound sense and resourcefulness to make a successful farmer than it does to make a bank president.

FOR THE PUPIL

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end of the outdoors: The fall plowing, even the digging of the ditches—all the work in the soil is about over by Thanksgiving when the ground begins to freeze.

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crib-house: Where the writer lived as a boy the corn was husked and left in the ear and stored in long, narrow houses built of beveled slats spaced about half an inch apart to allow the wind free play, but like the thin slats of a shutter so arranged that the rain ran down and, except in a driving wind, did not wet the grain.

“spring-house”: Spring-houses took the place of modern ice-chests, being little cupboard-like houses well ventilated and screened, built near the farmhouse and usually over a spring of water that kept the milk and other contents cool.

battened: Is this a “land” term or a “sea” term? What does it mean? Look it up and report.

the swallows: These were the barn swallows—the beautiful swallows with the long, finely-forked tail. You will always know them on the wing by the brown breast and fine forked tail.

worm-fence: A worm-fence is built of rails laid one on top of the other, running zigzag, each corner held together by two upright stakes, set in the ground and crossed just above the next-to-the-top rail. The top rail is laid in the crotch of the two stakes.

turn-o’-lane: name of a very excellent old-fashioned apple that got its name from the fact that the original tree of the kind grew at a turn of the lane—the writer does not know whose lane.

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