The Corn-cracker—full of spirit—wanted to fight.
We should have handed this anecdote over to X., who travels through the Pines, that he might pronounce on its authenticity. The following, however, we know to be true—on the word of a very spirituelle dame, long resident in the Old North State. When the present war first sent its murmurs over the South, an old bushman earnestly denied that it 'would ruin everything.' 'Kin it stop the turpentime from running?' he triumphantly cried. 'In course not. Then what difference kin it make to the country?'
The following sketch, 'Hiving the Bees and what came of it,' from a valued friend and correspondent in New Haven, is a humorous and truthful picture of the old-fashioned rural 'discipline' once so general and now so rapidly becoming a thing of the past:—
HIVING BEES AND WHAT CAME OF IT.
When a boy at school in the town of G—— I became acquainted with old Deacon Hubbard and his wife—two as good Christian people as could be found, simple in their manners and kind-hearted. The deacon was 'well to do in the world,' having a fine farm, a pleasant house, and, with his quiet way of living, apparently everything to make him comfortable.
He took great delight in raising bees, and the product of his hives was every year some hundreds of pounds of honey, for which there was always a ready market, though he frequently gave away large quantities among his neighbors.
One Sunday morning, when passing the place of Deacon Hubbard on my way to meeting, I saw the deacon in his orchard near his house, apparently in great trouble about something in one of his apple trees. I crossed the road to the fence and called to him, and asked him what was the matter. He was a very conscientious man, and would not do anything on the Lord's day that could be done on any other; but he cried, 'Oh, dear! my bees are swarming, and I shall surely lose them. If I was a young man I could climb the tree and save them, but I am too old for that.' I jumped over the fence, and as I approached him he pointed to a large dark mass of something suspended from the limb of an apple tree, which to me was a singular-looking object, never having before seen bees in swarming time. I had great curiosity to see the operation of hiving, and suggested that perhaps I could help him, though at the time afraid the bees would sting me for my trouble. The gratification to be derived I thought would repay the risk, and calling to mind some lines I had heard,—
'Softly, gently touch a nettle,
It will sting thee for thy pains;
Grasp it like a man of mettle,