"It's a het day, Mr. Jamieson."
On the next round he bent to his work with all his energy, but when he reached the end of the swath and glanced around his triumphant partner remarked:
"It's a het day, Mr. Jamieson."
All day long he plunged ahead, but she kept at his heels, and when the last swath was cut and the last sheaf bound she threw the rake over her shoulder and remarked:
"It has been a het day, Mr Jamieson."
It is generally believed that later on he proposed to the Amazon and that the answer she gave made it "a cauld day" for Mr. Jamieson.
With the spirit of harvest home in the air it is a source of real joy to one who reclines in a hammock and meditates on what other people do that the last word on these happy festivals has been written by a Canadian. All the poets have had a try at it and some of them did fairly well, but it remained for McIntyre of Ingersoll, The Cheese Poet, to reach the fundamental truth. With the plain practical common sense for which he was noted, he penetrated through all the shams and make-believes that always surround periods of thanksgiving and let the truth gush forth in limpid verse. His poem on "Big Crops" closes with a couplet that should be better known, for it is undoubtedly destined to immortality. Hearken to McIntyre:
"Forty bushels to the acre
Makes us grateful to our Maker."
There you have it. Can you add anything or take anything away! To approve its truth you have but to notice the thin, sour smile of the man whose crops yielded but ten bushels to the acre when he takes up the Thanksgiving hymn. Then behold the irradiating happiness of him whose bins are bursting with a forty-bushel crop. Note how he bellows forth the strains and makes a joyful noise. Unquestionably the laurels belong to McIntyre. He has summed up the harvest-home spirit once for all.