In Pastures Green

by Peter McArthur

The honest farmer, when his chores are done.
Pulls off his boots and sits beside the fire;
Toasteth his toes and holdeth forth upon
The little things that have aroused his ire.
He mourneth for the men he used to hire—
Great brawny giants, who would work all day,
Then do the chores and never loaf or tire—
And wait a year at least to get their pay.
Thus peevishly he frets and wears the night away.

Or else he takes his weekly paper down
And reads it—even the editorial page;
Talks of the wicked things they do in town,
Where financiers in pirate schemes engage.
Or works himself into a sputtering rage
About the things that politicians do,
Disgracing both their country and the age—
Believing all he reads as being true.
O Globe, and Mail, I fear some things are "up to you."

Their homework done, the children from the loft
Bring down the nuts and have their nightly feed;
The noise they make their mother chideth oft,
To which, alas, they give but little heed.
Then rings the telephone, and you may read
On Jenny's cheek the old, eternal tale—
She answereth it with startled, nimble speed,
Feigneth surprise and striveth hard to veil
The converse that she hath with some adoring male.

Somehow the telephone doesn't seem to harmonise with words ending in "eth." The future Burns will be wise to choose some measure more tripping and up-to-date than the stately and rumbling Spenserian stanza.

Do the quail and black squirrels keep posted on the game laws and know when it is safe to appear in public? Kipling says that the wild elephants know to a day when the hunting season ends, and celebrate the occasion with a dance. Our wild game must have knowledge of the same kind. All summer and fall I saw but two flocks of quail, and I wouldn't have seen them if I hadn't happened to walk right among them. Since the shooting season closed I can't cross a field without scaring up a flock, and "their tameness is fearful to me." The black squirrels are positively impudent when one goes walking through the woods. Since the snow fell, rabbit tracks are to be seen everywhere, but the rabbits themselves manage to keep out of sight. They are not protected by the game laws; at least that is the belief in the country, and they are liable to be potted at any time. Some boys not more than a hundred miles from here have been trying to snare rabbits. So far, they have managed to snare two cats and a pullet without disastrous results to any of the victims. Having snares out is strongly recommended to distracted mothers as a means of getting schoolboys quickly dressed in the morning. The snares must be visited just at daylight, and a normal boy can be warranted to jump out of bed and into all his clothes in less than five minutes if he wants to visit them. Apparently, it does no harm to the rabbits, so you must not accuse the boys of cruelty. The cats need exercise anyway, and no doubt a copper wire snare can give the huskiest tom cat a busy five minutes that will work up an appetite for his breakfast.

Dec. 14.—No matter what happens, we have had a spell of old-fashioned winter. The January thaw may come and be followed by open weather, as so many are prophesying, but we have had sleighing and everything else worth while that winter can offer. First we had a week of cold weather ranging from zero to twenty above. Every day it was cloudy and threatening snow, and enough fell to cover the ground. Then the papers predicted a warm wave and the trouble began. On the morning when the change was due snow began to fall in big flakes, and there was a moderate wind from the south-west. While there was no thawing the snow was soft enough to stick to everything it touched, and soon the buildings, fences, and tree trunks were white with it. I was driving along the road when the change came. Without a moment's warning the wind began to blow a hurricane from the north, and the temperature must have fallen ten degrees in less than a minute. Under the lashing of the wind the snow on the ground rose in blinding drifts. The driver was brought almost to a standstill by the force of the wind. The robe was nearly whisked off my knees, and a loose corner of the curtain on the buggy top flapped and snapped with a sound like pistol shots. For half an hour the air was a smother of drifting and falling snow. All the while the wind steadily increased in violence, then it died down as suddenly as it came, and the sky cleared. The mercury had fallen to eight above zero, and it stayed there. All afternoon the weather continued about the same, with occasional flurries of dry, powdery snow, but at nightfall it began to snow in earnest. Not a breath of wind was stirring, and the fine, dry snow came down as quietly as a mist. It covered everything. It rested on all the branches of the trees, and even on the little twigs. On the following morning there was a blanket of snow four inches deep, and big, glittering frost-flakes were sifting down from an almost cloudless sky. The thermometer registered two above zero, and it was an ideal morning to take out the cutter. While driving to school to the music of bells it was almost impossible to look towards the sun, everything was so blinding white. But everything was beautiful. The distant woods were picked out in white and brown, and every weed, thistle, and stalk of grass was fluffy with snow. There was a little white cap on every fence post, and here and there the snow rested on the wires, the air was so still. The stillness, hardly broken by a sound, continued all day. The snow rested where it fell, feathery light and sparkling like diamond dust. The sun went down through a cold, coppery haze. It had been a perfect winter day. About eight o'clock the mercury suddenly began to fall, and kept on going down until it touched six below. In the still, glistening moonlight the world was a frozen fairyland. Then the sky clouded over, and the weather began to moderate. Since then we have had moderate temperatures, ranging from ten above to twenty-eight, and the sleighing has been of the best. There have been cutter-rides both by night and by day, snowballing, sliding on the government drain, and such coasting as an almost flat country affords. No matter what the future has in store for us, we have had a taste of the best that a Canadian winter can give.

One night when it was too beautiful for one to be indoors there was a walk across the still fields to visit a neighbour. The full moon was swinging up in the east, and there were more stars sparkling underfoot than overhead. The snow was so light that it was kicked aside at every step without being felt. The light wind that was stirring from the west was so cold that it made the nostrils sting and frost gathered even on our eyelashes. Though the fields were white and the moon was shining the shadows under the trees and behind every tuft of grass or weed were dead black. Sleigh-bells could be heard in the distance, and every now and then a gust of laughter and young voices singing would be wafted to our ears. An owl was hooting dismally in the woods, and the sound echoed away until it was lost in the distance. After a brisk walk we were soon warming ourselves beside a roaring wood fire, and the talk began about pioneer days. "A sad tale's best for winter," and there is always sadness in the stories of the old days. As I listened, the impression that grew on me was of heart-breaking isolation and homesickness, and the stifling, imprisoning wilderness. Though the pioneers hewed out homes for themselves, Canada was never their home. Their true homes were in the lands from which they came and to which they never returned. To us who were born to inherit what they won Canada is a true home, and it is hard for us to realise what they felt in the long years it took to transform the wilderness to one of the garden spots of the world. The struggles and weariness and heartache of the pioneers are to me a tale of never-ending interest. They toiled and walked apart from the world, fretted over the past and hoped for the future, but—

"This, all this, was in the olden
Time long ago."

While the talk progressed there were apples and winter pears to eat, and then came the walk home through the frosty moonlight, with the snow crunching faintly underfoot. On the road we met others who had been lured away to neighbourly visits by the beauty of the night, and it was good to feel that, instead of killing sociability, the winter weather had really aroused it to more activity. Winter weather and winter pleasures at their best are very good.

Dec. 17.—A few nights ago the boys were testing their skates, and the familiar ringing sound seemed good in the frosty moonlight. And yet it was sporting under difficulties. All the ice they had to practise on was a frozen puddle about three rods long and a rod wide. As a matter of fact, skating, like everything else, has moved to town. I can remember when we had whole fields for skating ponds, but that was before the days of government drains and underdrainage. Now there are very few ponds or swamps left, and skating is no longer a country sport, except in specially-favoured localities. But every town and practically every village has its skating rink, where they hold carnivals on the solid ice in the winter time, and political meetings in the summer, when statesmen skate on thin ice. Of course, I am not regretting the fact that the country is too well drained for skating. I am merely noting the fact that this change has taken place, and I am afraid that skating is not the only sport that is lost to us. Baseball also seems to have retreated to the cities and towns, and hockey has taken the place of shinny, and is played almost entirely on the town rinks. But there may be another reason for this. Where could a boy find a shinny stick nowadays? The average woodlot in which cattle have been pasturing hasn't a stick left in it that is under thirty or forty years old. It is getting rather hard for country boys and girls to have fun of any kind without going to town for it and paying an admission fee. This may not seem of much importance to serious-minded people, but I am inclined to think it is very important. Most of us like to remember the homes of our childhood by the games we played in them, and to have no games is to have fewer ties binding the children to the land. I am afraid the country is getting altogether too practical and joyless. In the big cities they now have "play-masters," who teach the children how to play in the parks and vacant lots, and it has been found that they work better and behave better because of the good times they have. It seems to me that something should be done in the schools to interest the children in suitable sports that will take the place of those that made life richer for their fathers and mothers.