In Pastures Green

by Peter McArthur

"I've always noticed that after a dry spell such as we have been having it takes a lot to get the rain started."

According to that the weather must be something like the old wooden pumps we used to have. It needs a thorough priming before we can get rain. Another thing I have noticed is the different language people use about a storm when the weather is dry. In ordinary times they say that a storm "looks threatening." After a spell like this they say of every thunderhead that appears, "That looks promising." It makes all the difference whether rain is wanted or not.

I hope we don't have a mad-dog scare this summer. If we do I am afraid it is all up with Sheppy, the dog. He is so full of irrepressible fool energy that he can't help falling under suspicion of being afflicted with rabies. Every once in a while the steam gets hissing at his safety valve and he simply can't contain himself. He will start running around in wide circles, with head down and tongue lolling out, barking and snapping at everything he passes. I admit that I might be alarmed myself if I had not seen him act in the same way in mid-winter. The explanation seems to be that he gets so full of the joy of life that he simply has to act foolish to express his emotion. Of course I know it is wrong, if not positively immoral, for him to act in that way in a province so sedate and well ordered as Ontario, but I cannot find it in my heart to check him. And he has a wicked habit of taking the end of a stick in his mouth and running around the children until one of them grabs the other end, and they go for a romp together. I know in my heart that this should not be allowed. Sheppy should be taught to work off his superfluous energy on one of those treadmill churns they advertise in the farm papers, and the children should be doing their homework or reading improving books. As for me, I know that I should not be lying on my stomach on the grass, laughing at their antics. I should be doing something to improve my mind, such as sitting on the roadside fence discussing reciprocity with some neighbour who doesn't know any more about it than I do. But I am afraid that I have fallen too much into the way of Carman's St. Kavin, who

"Was something like a gnome,
Or a sphinx let out of school—
He could always be at home
Just beyond the reach of rule."

With a whole province full of people who are setting me good examples of serious-mindedness and industry and all the virtues, I have become so hardened that I can spend an hour at any time watching the pup and the children at play and never think of reproving them. I know this is very, very wrong, and—and—

"I'm very sorry, very much ashamed,
And mean—next winter—to be thoroughly reclaimed."

I have never heard birds accused of having a sense of humour, but there is a killdeer in the pasture field that seems to have glimmerings. Every evening when Sheppy and I go out to milk the cows this bird flutters down in front of the dog and acts like a flying machine that has broken one of its planes or has run out of gasoline. Of course Sheppy takes after it, and the bird will flutter along just ahead of him for a couple of hundred yards and then, with a joyous screech, will rise over the fence and leave him in the lurch. When he starts to trot back the bird will swoop down ahead of him, and the chase will be resumed until another fence is reached, and then the rising and screeching will be repeated. I suppose the killdeer has a nest somewhere in the field, but it doesn't matter what part of the fifteen acres Sheppy appears in the bird will come to tease him. They usually keep up the game all the time I am milking, until the poor dog is so hot and panting so hard you would think he was trying to "step outside of himself and let the wind whistle through his ribs." When the dog finally gives up the chase and starts home with me the bird circles around above us screeching "Look't here! look't here!" in the offensive way that people have when they have got the better of you in a practical joke. Probably sober-minded, scientific persons would say that the killdeer is simply trying to protect its young and keep the dog from approaching them, but I don't believe it. I think that the bird is simply having fun. Our scientific men are all so serious-minded that I am afraid they miss many things when engaged in their nature studies. Perhaps if they cultivated humour a little they would not make so many solemn blunders.

July 15.—It is not often that I want to make a speech. As a rule I would rather have a tooth filled than speak a few well-chosen words at a picnic or meeting of the Farmers' Institute, but yesterday afternoon there were some minutes when I yearned to pour forth my perturbed spirit in an adequate oration. If I could have been transported from the cornfield just at the instant when the monkey-wrench slipped and I barked three knuckles of my right hand, and if at that psychological moment I could have been placed on the platform of a meeting of the Manufacturers' Association, I would have addressed a few words to that stall-fed aggregation of Privileged Pirates that would have made Demosthenes against Philip, Cicero against Catiline, and Burke against the despoiler of the Carnatic sound like the commencement exercises at a girls' school. G-rr-r-r-!! (meaning snarls of rage). Why won't some one let me get at them? Their relations with the press are largely confined to the servile approaches of the advertising department, or to the well-fed compliments of the halter-broke editors who respond to the toast of the press at annual banquets. It might do them good to have a run in with a spontaneous and care-free journalistic outlaw when he was in the humour to kick out the tail board of the dictionary, and let the big bouncing adjectives roll down from the sulphur-blue heights of his eloquence. I do not think it was in vain that the poison of asps was put under my lips, and if I could have got at those fellows while the monkey-wrench was in my hand they would have sent in a fire alarm, called the police, wired Colonel the Honourable Sam Hughes for a regiment, and then to a man they would have hidden their fatness under the seats until the lightning and continuous thunder had passed, and the weather began to clear.

Of course, all this demands some explanation, but in making the explanation I want to make a few restrictions. I want it to be understood that I am talking as man to man to farmers who do their own work. What I have to say is not intended for those purse-proud farmers who have hired men, and who feel that because they sold their beef cattle for a few cents above the market it is to them I am referring when I speak of shady operations in High Finance. Do you know I have been finding that when I pay my respects to Sir Jingo McBore there are a lot of farmers who feel that I am attacking the propertied class, and that they are getting kicks out of the overflow? But that is not what I want to talk about to-day. I simply want to explain to the ordinary farmer, who has to scratch gravel with both feet in order to provide for his brood, that I have stumbled on another way in which we are being looted, and it is the meanest and most exasperating trick that has come to my notice in a blue moon. I was placidly cultivating corn in the new orchard, when I noticed that the frame of the cultivator was working loose. The correct thing to do was to tighten the nuts, and I got a wrench for that purpose. Feeling that I was doing the right thing at the right time, just as a real farmer would do it, I began to turn on one of the nuts with the wrench. But it did no good. There was no tightening of the loose frame. A more careful examination showed that the bolt was turning with the nut, and I could keep on turning till the cows came home, and it would make no difference. The head of the bolt was round and flat, and there was no possible way of catching it with another wrench and holding it while the nut was being tightened. I passed on to several other nuts that were working loose, and found the same state of affairs. Every bolt would turn with the nut, and it was impossible for me to tighten anything. It was just after I had made this discovery that it occurred to me that perhaps if I gave the wrench a quick jerk the nut would loosen and begin to turn without the bolt. I tried and the wrench slipped and my knuckles struck on the iron frame. That was the moment when I should have been introduced to the Manufacturers' Association. As it was I merely sat down on the cultivator frame, and, though there was no one but the old grey horse to hear me, I talked about the manufacturer of that cultivator for some minutes. It was about two o'clock in the afternoon, about the time when he would be sipping his coffee after his luncheon, and I shouldn't wonder but he remarked to his wife that his ears were burning and that probably some one was talking about him. If he said that, he was entirely right. Some one was talking about him in a very restrained but exceedingly feverish manner.