One pleasant afternoon, in the autumn just passed, I lay stretched out lazily on a mow of new-mown hay, in a large, old-fashioned country barn.
It was still redolent with that odor peculiar to hay newly cut, having been placed in the barn but a few hours before.
In the work of cutting, raking, and storing, patent machines of every description had assisted; and, lying there cosily enjoying the effect, I had plenty of leisure to think upon the cause.
With my mind full of reflections on the wonderful improvements of the age, and vague thoughts of labor-saving machines, it was not long until I was off in a sound slumber, to which a hearty dinner had by no means indisposed me. I was soon in the theatre of dreams, and the first actor whose voice I heard was an old scythe. Apparently, the peg on which he hung was rotten, and, giving way, let the old fellow fall with a shock that seemed to stir up what little life yet remained in him; for I soon heard, in a queer, cracked voice, the following complaint:
“Well, here I am at last! Hung up on the wall years ago, like an old coat that's put aside for a rainy day, my master couldn't even see to it that I had a safe peg; but, hanging me on that old rotten thing, I've got a fall that my poor bones won't be the better of for a month to come.”
With that, one of the patent mowers, showing his polished teeth, gruffly asked: “What are you growling about? What's that you're saying about the master?”
“It ill suits you,” said the scythe, “to put on airs, though you are rubbed and polished, and, drawn by a dashing team, ride about on wheels. Upstarts always assume great importance, and the latest converts are the most zealous partisans; when you have served the master as long and as faithfully as I have, you may have some right to maintain his cause.”
“Why,” said the mower, “you're quite a preacher, to be sure; pray tell us what cause you have for grievance? Is it, forsooth, because your peg gave way you are so highly incensed? Even if you did get a fall, I think you ought to be grateful that you are housed high and dry, and not left out in the rain to rust.”
“My fall is a small matter indeed,” said the scythe, “compared with my other wrongs. When I see you, with your gay paint and glittering teeth, eating up the food that I enjoyed for years; when I see fair meadows of clover, and valleys filled with golden grain, all given over to your rapacious maw, and I, I who once received all this as my just right, allowed but the little scraps that grow around a stump—when I see all this, my temper is tried to the utmost at the injustice that is done me.”
“Yes,” chimed in an old and well-nigh toothless rake, “you may well complain of the scanty share that is doled out to you; I [pg 141] too, hang here neglected, and, when I am taken down, get equally tough morsels for my poor teeth.”