"AS YE SOW SO SHALL YE REAP."—PAGE 140.
After he had set the stakes and drawn the line across the field, we were ready for a start. I was to hold the "machine," and he to drive the horse. As we were about to start he suggested that I had better take off my coat, vest, boots and stockings, and roll up my pants. I did so.
The wisdom of this move will be seen later. The old mare started on a gait equal to that of the "deaf drover" over the rough roads. I held tight to the handles, making lofty jumps from one step to another, sinking into the plowed ground almost to my knees each time. Before we were half through the field I was in a profuse perspiration, and had succeeded in knocking one of my great toe-nails entirely off, which afterwards laid me up for two weeks. When we reached the other end he looked solemnly at me and said: "By gosh! you can run like a racehorse can't you?"
"Yes," I replied, almost out of breath, "and you are no slouch yourself."
I then took a comfortable seat on a fence-rail and asked him if that was the fastest horse he owned. He answered: "No, by gosh, I own one that can out-trot this one."
"Yes," I said, "but trotters won't do here. We must have a running horse to do this right."
After skimming over a couple of acres which took but a few minutes, we concluded to make an investigation to see how evenly the kernels were being distributed.
Although it seemed to us that we were using up a large quantity of corn we found but few hills containing more than the average number of kernels.