IN PASTURES
GREEN

BY

PETER McARTHUR

AUTHOR OF
"THE PRODIGAL AND OTHER POEMS"
"TO BE TAKEN WITH SALT," ETC.

1916
LONDON AND TORONTO
J. M. DENT & SONS LTD.
NEW YORK: E. P. DUTTON & CO.

I DEDICATE THIS BOOK
TO ALL CITY MEN
WHO ARE TALKING
OF GOING BACK TO THE LAND.
IF EACH ONE WHO DOES NOT GO
BUYS A COPY
I SHALL BE ENTIRELY SATISFIED

[PREFACE]

The brief essays in this book were written for the Toronto Globe and Farmer's Advocate. As they deal with all kinds of farm work at different seasons of the year they have been cast into the form of a journal in order to give the volume some degree of continuity. The man who wishes to learn the human side of farming may find something to interest him, but the man who consults these pages for scientific information does so at his peril.

In order to suggest the scope of the essays and outline the experiences on which they were based I offer the following letter which was published in the Globe shortly after the outbreak of the war. After this has been digested thoughtfully the reader may wander through the pages of the book just as he might wander over the farm if he wished to learn something about country life.

Ekfrid, Aug. 20.—This morning, while thinking about one of the serious problems now pressing for solution, I was moved to take stock of my business as a farmer, and the result surprised me. Feeling that what I found may have some bearing on the solution of the problem I had in mind, I am going to set forth some personal matters, in the hope that they may be helpful to others.

Five years ago I landed on this farm with no assets but a love of nature, a sense of humour, and a deep-rooted conviction that because I had been born and brought up on a farm I could make a living for myself and family from the land. When I took stock to-day I found that I have on hand enough produce to keep man and beast in perfect comfort for at least a year—until another harvest—and that is not a small matter at a time when our world is in ruins. When you understand my purpose you will absolve me from any suspicion of boasting when I tell you what I have on the farm. I have four milch cows, two heifers, a steer that is fattening for winter beef, and three calves; over twenty tons of hay; stacks of mixed oats and barley that if threshed would probably yield from two to three hundred bushels; a field of corn that will probably yield five hundred bushels; a well-loaded orchard and a plentiful supply of home-preserved fruit; a good patch of potatoes, and a garden with a winter's supply of such staple vegetables as celery, tomatoes, cabbage, beets, carrots, and onions. I also have an interest in a flock of poultry that insures a plentiful supply of fresh eggs at all times, as well as fat hens for the pot, and just now plump broilers are practising crowing all over the place. I also have ducks, turkeys, and guinea-fowl to provide for feast days that may be allowed to come oftener than they ever came in the city. The expenditure of less than $50 would provide us with supplies of flour, sugar, tea, salt, and other necessaries that would enable us to live in comfort for a year, even if we were entirely cut off from the rest of the world.

Just what the farm has meant to me in the past five years I cannot tell, for things did not work out as I had planned. Instead of applying myself wholly to farming, like Zangwill "I returned to my inky vomit," and depended on my pen for a living. While doing this I farmed in "a rambling, desultory way," and had more fun with my farming operations than an active pup ever had with an old shoe. I did what I liked, and did it as I liked. At no time did I attempt to farm for profit. Everything was raised for our own use, and if there was a surplus of anything it was sold. No attempt was made to run a model farm—I was simply a poor farmer of the kind that make a bare living from the land. While doing this I kept up a constant roar about my farm work. I issued more bulletins than the Department of Agriculture, and I am afraid they were more widely read. This was good business from the point of view of a writer, but I am afraid that some who missed the burlesquing tone of many articles got obsessed with the idea that I was trying to farm scientifically and to show how farming should be done. Real farmers, according to their various natures, viewed my work with pity, contempt, ridicule, loathing, malevolence, mendacity, loquacity, jackassity, and every other capacity that people develop. Lecturers for the farmers' institutes made it a point to call on me when they were in the neighbourhood, and after the first shock was over proceeded to gather specimens of noxious weeds that they found it hard to get elsewhere. Government scientists came out of their way to see me, and gazed with awe at the neglected farm from which I had raised such a crop—of newspaper articles. Then they took out their cyanide bottles and began to collect rare specimens of bugs and pests, for I had all of them. Touring automobilists stopped to make a call, and when they went away I could hear them laughing as far off as the second culvert on the concession line. Nevertheless and notwithstanding I never described any farm work that I did not do and no incident was recorded that did not happen. If you have a false idea of my farming it is your own fault. At all times I told the truth, merely garnishing it with humour, poetry, and philosophy. And to-day the result of my farm work is the most satisfactory asset I have. In the days of the patriarchs a man with more than a year's supply of provisions would be regarded as a plutocrat. In the awakening that has been caused by the war I shall be surprised if there are not many people in our cities who will think that the patriarchal view was right.

During the years that I have been writing from the country I have received many hundreds, possibly thousands, of letters, and I was glad that not one of them was from some one who had been induced by me to leave the city and try farming. To-day I feel differently about the matter. My experience has shown me that although attempts to farm for profit would result in failure for most city people, it is quite possible for a city man to farm for a living. Without any definite purpose to that end I find myself with a year's living in hand, and know that, with good health, I can accomplish that much year after year. At this time, with the business of the world more completely disorganised than most people imagine, I do not hesitate to advise every one who can possibly go back to the land to go. If I had my way there would not be a vacant farmhouse in all Canada before the snow flies. Men who are out of work and have some resources would find it cheaper to spend the idle winter on a farm, and they could be ready by spring to begin to make their living from the soil. At the present time our cities have many victims of the war who are as blameless as the victims of a great fire or any similar disaster. They must be cared for, and our government would be making no mistake in voting an appropriation for the purchase of a million bags of flour for the relief of distress at home. It will be many years before the business of the world can be resumed in the volume of past years, and those who are in authority can do nothing better than get the unemployed back on the land, where they can earn their own food, clothing, and shelter. This suggests that the land problem will soon be one of the most pressing in Canada. How are people to get back on the land? My friends of the Single Tax Association need not write to me to explain how this is to be accomplished. I admit all their conclusions, though as a weak human being I resent the perfection of their logic. Nothing in my experience has ever happened logically. If they will stop antagonising people with their perfect theory they may see their dreams fulfilled much sooner than they expect. The nationalisation of land is immeasurably nearer than any one supposes, and it will be brought about by the blundering logic of events. The people must get back on the land, must! must! must! The work of education undertaken by Henry George and his disciples is now practically complete. The time has come for action. People must have access to the land—to the one source of production. If the people of the cities turn towards the land, where they can provide for themselves, it will not be long before as much justice as is humanly possible will be accorded to them. Land-hunger will force a solution of the land problem. The time for dissertations on abstract justice is past. It is to stimulate the land-hunger that I have made bold to trouble readers of this column with so frank a statement of my personal affairs at the present time. If you are looking ahead with terror to the long winter, you should make up your mind that before another winter comes you will be as well provided for as I am, with the fruits of your own labour on the land. "Back to the land" should become a slogan of power. I trust that those who are in authority, and who will have the task of caring for our victims of the war, will give it their earnest attention.

[IN PASTURES GREEN]

[JANUARY]

Ekfrid, Jan. 3.—We are a hopelessly unromantic people. We go about even the most delightful of our affairs in a sadly hum-drum way. Take the opening of an apple-pit in winter, for instance. If the "well-greaved Greeks" had anything like this in their lives they would have approached the task with appropriate songs and ceremonial dances. They would have done justice to the winter-ripened apple,

"That hath been
Cooled a long age in the deep-delved earth,
Tasting of Flora and the country green,
Dance and provençal song and sunburnt mirth."

Now notice how prosaically the Canadian farmer undertakes the work. After the women folks have been nagging him for a couple of weeks he begins to feel apple-hungry himself, and some fine morning he takes the long-handled shovel and an old axe and proceeds to open the pit. The snow is first carefully shovelled away from the little treasure-house of autumn fruitfulness and then the covering of frozen earth is chopped away. This uncovers the protecting layer of straw, which is removed, laying bare the apples. What a gush of perfume burdens the frosty air! Spies, Baldwins, Russets, and Pippins give their savour aright, and if a man had a touch of poetry in his soul he would begin at once to fashion lyrics. But there is no poetry. He simply remarks to himself that they have kept well, fills a bag, stuffs back the straw and piles on the earth and snow to keep out the frost. He then carries the bag to the kitchen and announces that he expects to have "apple-sass" for dinner. Possibly he wipes an apple on his sleeve and eats it while going to the barn to finish his chores, but on the whole he treats the event as if it were an ordinary part of the day's work.

Although our Canadian apples are good at all times, they are now at their best. There is a flavour to a winter-ripened apple that surpasses praise. It has a fullness and tang that provoke the appetite more than it satisfies. A winter evening spent around a roaring fire with a plateful of well-polished apples within reach, and old friends to talk with, is something to cheer even the soul of a pessimist. As for the children, their delight is twofold when the apple-pit has been opened. Not only do they gorge themselves, but they dream of the affluence they will enjoy by bartering apples at school. The school price of apples varies, but yesterday a sound, rosy Spy was disposed of for two empty rifle cartridges (thirty-two long), the stub of a lead-pencil, and a copper harness rivet without a washer. From this you can figure out how much boy bric-a-brac a bushel would buy. It is possible that it was by just such bartering as this that some of our financial magnates developed their wonderful business sagacity. Perhaps it was by carrying the best apples to the teacher that they learned the first principles of lobbying and the value of standing in with the powers that be. It does not seem at all unreasonable to suppose that the boy who learns at school how to dispose of his apples most profitably will later pick plums and cut melons. Our educational system may have sides to it that are not recognised by the Education Department.

The man who induced the pioneers of this district to plant orchards should have his name emblazoned on the pages of history like "apples of gold in pictures of silver." I remember him as a hale Scotchman of eighty, to whom a twenty-mile walk to visit an old friend was simply a holiday jaunt. In his youth he could do fifty miles a day and sell trees at every farmhouse he passed. He canvassed the country from London to Windsor, and probably sold more trees than any other agent that ever covered the territory. He was known as an honourable man, and when he praised a particular apple his words were believed. By his efforts an orchard was planted on almost every farm, and although the apples he sold could not compare with the highly-developed apples of the present, they were good, and demonstrated beyond a doubt what a glorious district this is for fruit. Most of the early orchards were planted too closely because of the scarcity of cleared land, and the trees were seldom pruned properly, but they yielded a store of apples that added a zest to the simple fare of the pioneers. The orchards he sold have all died out, but they have been replaced by others, for no one here would think of being without apples. I know of only one tree of his selling that is still in existence. When a mature tree it suffered some injury that checked it for a time until a second growth started near the root. The original tree died away, but the second growth is bearing every year, and it seems destined to a long lease of life. I do not know the age which apple trees attain, but this one is now over sixty years old. It is what was called a rib apple, a kind no longer known to the nurseries. In its time it was counted the best apple in the township, but it cannot compare with the wonderful fruit of the present. It furnished good eating in its day, and deserves to have a tablet affixed to it as a survivor of the pioneer orchards.

It is a pleasure to be able to record the passing of the dried apple. It was the precursor of the prune as a boarding-house dish, and was once widely used as a substitute for food. They used to have paring-bees, where the young people peeled, quartered, and cored the apples, and then threaded them like beads to be strung up over the stove to dry. While drying they served as "a murmurous haunt of flies." Every farmhouse once had its apple-screen, made of laths, which was hung over the stove with the pipe going through it for the purpose of drying apples. Its contents were also popular with the flies, and, as screen-doors were unknown then, you can guess how plentiful the flies were. Dried apples were once an article of commerce, but it is long since I have seen any or have been insulted by having them offered to me at the table. I am told that, although the farmers no longer dry apples, there are factories where apples are desiccated—desecrated, one woman explained—and that they may be found wherever prunes and dried apricots are offered for sale. It may be so; I do not know, and do not want to know. I am sure that dried apples by any other name would taste as leathery and unpalatable. I am content to know that they are no longer used in the country. Sound apples, fresh from the pit, are good enough for me.

Jan. 5.—I used to wonder why our nature writers never write stories about the common domestic cow. She is certainly of more importance than wild animals, and yet she seldom figures in literature except in the herd book and in market reports. I say this used to puzzle me, but it puzzles me no longer. Charles G. D. Roberts and Thompson Seton and Kipling can tell us the secret thoughts of wolves and bears and tigers and crocodiles and such critters just as easy as easy, but cows are beyond them. Cows are deep. They think thoughts that are beyond the poets. You can't fool me about cows, because I am living with them just now. Acting as valet to a bunch of cows and young cattle has given me a chance to study them closely, and my respect for them is increasing every day. Cows certainly think, but only when they have the proper environment. They don't think all over the place like college professors and eminent people generally. It has always been very disconcerting to me to meet great men on the street, or in the railway station, or on the crowded rear platform of a street car, and to find them thinking all the time. They seem to have developed thinking into a bad habit, but not so with cows. Cows can spend days and days without thinking, but when the conditions are right they think unutterable things. And they are very human in this. A well-known writer told me once that he can never think freely unless he begins by thinking about a telegraph pole. He couldn't explain why it was, but if he once got his mind completely concentrated on a telegraph pole ideas would at once come surging into his brain. It is the same with cows, and the object that inspires them to their loftiest flights is a gate. Let no one be surprised at this. Even philosophers have mighty things to say about gates. What says Omar?

"Up from earth's centre to the Seventh gate
I rose, and on the throne of Saturn sate,
And many a knot unriddled by the way
But not the master-knot of human fate."

Fate—there you have it. Fate is undoubtedly the favourite subject of thought with meditative cows. You have only to look at them and notice their awful solemnity and the gravity of their mild and magnificent eyes to know that they are not thinking of any ordinary matter like the beef trust, or the high cost of hay, or anything of that sort. But it is not enough to have a cow see a gate to start her thinking. You must try to drive her through it. In fact, I am not sure that one lone cow would start thinking even in a gate. You must have a herd of them and it usually works out in about this way. After you have run yourself out of breath gathering the herd the boss will take the lead and the skittish young cattle will be bringing up the rear. As soon as the boss gets into the gate where none of the others can pass her a great idea will strike her and she will stop to chew her cud and think it over. If you are in a hurry you will probably start yelling at her, but it will do no good. Nothing can interrupt her profound thoughts and your yelling will only disturb the young cattle and start them scampering around the field. In all probability you will start throwing clods and sticks, and if your aim is good you may jolt her through the gate, but you will find that before further progress can be made you will have to gather the young cattle again. When you get your little flock to the gate once more you will find that the deputy boss becomes seized of a great idea when she reaches the middle, and the business of yelling, throwing clods, and gathering the young cattle has to be done all over again. There have been times when it has taken me half an hour to get a thoughtful herd of cows through a twelve-foot gate, and by the time the last of the young cattle passed through, a hair's-breadth ahead of the toe of my boot, my temper "had gone where the dead crabs go." Still, I always solace myself with the reflection that I have been the first to discover that cows think.

But gates are not the only things that inspire cows. Doors also seem to have a very stimulating effect on their cerebral processes. Sometimes when I turn the cows out to water I just go down the line unloosing their chains. When the first cow reaches the door and gets a glimpse of the fair round world she stops to reflect on its beauty. The cows behind her, lacking this inspiration, begin to hook and bunt one another until the stable is a howling pandemonium, but the cow in the door is in no wise disturbed. She stands there and thinks, and thinks, and thinks. As for me, well—perhaps I hadn't better tell what I am thinking and saying. As a rule, before I am too severely trampled I manage to get hold of a fork and break the reverie of the thinker in the doorway. In my opinion Rodin missed a great opportunity when sculptoring "The Thinker." He should have hewn a cow out of marble rather than a man who looks like G. Bernard Shaw. When it comes to real thinking, give me a cow. I suspect that she gets as far with her problems as the best thinker of us all.

Now that I think of it, there is another cow problem that I should like to have solved. Does any man of wide experience know how to drive half-a-dozen cows across a ten-acre field without zigzagging back and forward until he has travelled about ten miles? Sometimes in the summer when I went to milk I would find that the cows were standing in the farthest corner of the field licking one another's ears and having a nice, quiet sociable time together. They would pay no attention to my alluring calls of "Co-Boss," and in the end I would have to hang the pails on the gate and go after them. Though they would be nicely grouped before I disturbed them, they would promptly spread out like a fan, and I would have to run along behind them driving each cow a few rods and then rushing on to the next. And each cow after I left her would stop and look at me with mild, wondering eyes as if trying to figure out just what I was trying to do. None of them would move except when I was raging behind them, and each time they moved they would move farther apart. If any one knows a practical method of keeping cows bunched while being driven across a field I am open for instruction. Cows are certainly useful and indispensable animals, but there are times when they are trying, very trying.

Jan. 6.—Last night the conversation turned on summer wood and the need of providing a supply.

"Good!" exclaimed the deponent, bubbling over with fool enthusiasm. "I need exercise, and a session at the end of a crosscut saw would do me a world of good."

As a matter of fact, winter life in the country does get monotonous when one has nothing to do but drive to school with the children, go to the post office for the mail, read papers, crack nuts, and eat apples. The prospect of varying matters by a few days' work in the woods was positively alluring.

This morning conditions were ideal for outdoor work. The sun was shining, and a faint north wind was breathing over the snow. Bluejays were squawking in the orchard and crows cawing in the woods. The "eager and nipping air" seemed to put steam in every living thing that was about, and to go crunching through the drifts with an axe over one's shoulder seemed large and primitive and manly. In the woods flakes of snow were sifting down from the branches and faintly pungent woodland odours gave an exhilarating touch to the air.

A beech that had been felled for some purpose, but found unsatisfactory, was first attacked. It was held clear of the snow by a log on which it rested and by its branches. As the saw bit into it with a metallic "tang, tang," the prospects for a pleasant and profitable day were excellent. Yanking a saw across a sound piece of timber seemed more like fun than anything else, and as exercise it was not unlike rowing.

The first cut was all right and as the block fell into the snow the achievement was celebrated with a deep-lunged "Wheeee!" of satisfaction. When the second block fell the overcoat was felt to be an encumbrance and was removed.

"Tang, tang!" whimpered the saw through the hard wood. Two cuts more were completed and then the ordinary coat was felt to be rather heavy and was accordingly thrown off.

"Tang, tang!" The sound was getting monotonous and breathing was becoming noticeably difficult. What of that? Professor James of Harvard has written an authoritative essay on "Second Wind," in which he shows that if one keeps at it he will soon get his "second wind," and will be in a better condition for work than when he started. Nature has provided us with wonderful reserves of strength if we will but persist until they are reached. I was certainly in need of second wind, for the first was almost gone. I was distinctly puffing. Another cut and I was gasping. By the time another cut was finished I had developed "Charley horse," glass arm, lumbago, asthma, and symptoms of apoplexy. As for breathing I was simply biting at the air. Sweat was dripping from my eyebrows and the tip of my nose, and I was in the condition one reaches in the hot room of the Turkish bath, when the rubber comes in and remarks: "You are in a fine sweat. Better come and have a rub down." But there was no rub down. That wretched saw was pulled away from me as often as I pulled it across, and there was no music in its "tang, tan-n-ng!" Just as I was coming to the conclusion that the world was full of sawdust and that I hadn't a friend on earth, the tree was all cut into blocks.

"Now we will go at that maple stub."

I grunted assent. The enthusiasm was all gone.

As we tramped towards the maple, tracks were noticed that started us guessing. They looked like two footprints close together a couple of feet apart. Was it a mink or a weasel? It seemed too big for a weasel. A light snow had fallen on the previous night and the fresh tracks were easy to follow. They were much more interesting than that maple stub and I insisted on following them. We might get a mink. I have known men to draw to a mink and catch a fur-lined overcoat, so why shouldn't I? About fifty yards further on the tracks disappeared in a hole in a snowdrift beside a log. We were certainly in luck. By using the axe and kicking vigorously the snow was soon removed and a snug nest of leaves and mouse fur was found in a hollow under the log. It was still warm, showing that the occupant was at home. A few pokes with the axe handle brought out a more than snow-white ermine with a black-tipped tail. For about five seconds I was as active as a political K.C. hustling for a vacant judgeship. There was enough ermine in sight to make a beginning on a judge's robe, but only for a few seconds. He disappeared into a hole that led under the stump of an uprooted tree and I was looking at the place as disconsolately as a political K.C. reading the notice of a rival's appointment. A brief investigation showed that he was safe from pursuit. There was nothing to do but go at that miserable maple stub.

The maple stub measured two feet at the stump and was as sound as a bone. The top had been broken off by a windstorm a year ago and ever since it had been seasoning. After a notch had been cut on the side towards which the tree was to be made to fall we proceeded with our Gladstonian task. Working a crosscut saw in its natural position is bad enough, but working it on its side to cut through a standing tree—Oh, well, everything has to end some time. Presently it came crashing down.

"As falls on Mount Alvernus
The thunder-smitten oak."

As the echoes died away another sound was heard. It was the call to dinner. Say, have you ever heard the call to dinner in circumstances such as have been described? It is the most joyous sound in the world. If the women-folks only knew how good their voices sound at such times, they would call oftener—and earlier.

During the dinner hour the ermine—everybody else called it a weasel, but I had the Century Dictionary to back me—was discussed and the fiat went forth that he must be trapped. Where hens are kept weasels and similar vermin are not popular. There was a vivid recollection of twenty-six chickens that had been killed by a weasel one night last summer, so this one must be destroyed. No objection was made, for setting a trap is easier work than dragging a crosscut saw through a maple log. Nevertheless I scorned the preparations that were made. The dictionary describes the weasel as being remarkable for cunning, wariness, and alertness. It quotes the proverb about "catching a weasel asleep" and gives the impression that this creature, above all others, is capable, as the nature-fakirs say, of matching the intelligence of man with his cunning. The preparations for trapping were such as would be laughed at by a young rat, not to mention an old one. A dead hen that had been in cold storage in a snowdrift for a couple of months was dug out and laid beside a stump near the creature's hole. Around the hen a little hut of rotten wood was built, leaving an opening at the bottom. In this an ordinary rat trap was placed without any attempt at concealment. The whole arrangement was one that a cow would avoid even if it was baited with turnips. It was absurd to think that a weasel would be so foolish as to walk into a danger so "gross and palpable."

A time always comes when excuses and shifts fail, and at last there was nothing for it but to tackle the crosscut saw again. My hinges all felt rusty, and how sore those blisters felt! The first cut warmed me up and I felt better, but the second cut brought back the symptoms of asthma and apoplexy. Then I thought of a story.

"Talking about weasels, did I ever tell you about the Presbyterian elder living less than twenty miles from here who broke the Sabbath to kill one? He is the strictest Sabbatarian in the county and keeps the Sabbath in a way that makes the blue laws of New England look frivolous. He has all of the Sabbath food, fuel, and water prepared on Saturday, goes to church three times, and will allow no visitors. Well, one Friday night last summer a weasel got into his hen-house and killed all his hens but three. On Saturday night he came back and finished the three. On the Sabbath morning the elder saw the vermin skulking about the barn, and throwing his record to the winds he took out his shotgun and peppered the weasel." (This story was good for a five-minute rest.)

Another cut. "Tang, tan-n-n-ng." You will notice how slow and long-drawn the sound was becoming when I drew back the saw.

When the cut was finished I just had enough breath left to start a discussion of the comet that is now appearing in the west. The papers have not told definitely whether it is Halley's comet or another visitor. But even that ended.

After the next cut I managed to work up a talk about the plans of the Hydro-electric and to paint in glowing colours the good times we would have when electricity would be used to heat houses and for cooking. It wouldn't be necessary to cut wood then. Whew!

While the next cut was coming off a blister broke and I couldn't think of anything to talk about, so we plunged recklessly into another. Then I began to count the strokes. I found it took five hundred to take off one block. That may not show well beside some of the records made at the sawing matches, but it must stand. About this time I thought it would be a good idea to take the measuring stick and mark off the rest of the stub. Twenty-nine more cuts. At five hundred strokes to the cut, you can figure out what that would amount to. When I realised what this meant I sat on the log and, as Meredith says, my "thoughts began to bloat like poisoned toads." Would the sun never go down? I was killing time as shamelessly as a plumber. To work again, and then another blister broke. I don't believe the stories they tell about two men cutting eight cords of wood in a day with a crosscut saw.

As the dragging minutes passed I began to sympathise with Sisyphus, who had to roll a stone uphill, only to find that it always rolled back. No matter how savagely I yanked that saw towards me, it would be yanked away. As I kept up the dreary task I began to admire Schopenhauer, and decided that henceforth I would be an outspoken pessimist. Still the saw whimpered—

"Tang, Tan-n-n-n-g!"

At last, when "even despair grew mild," I was told the time had come to do chores. Without a word I shambled towards home and, like Hosea Biglow, I went

"Back
Along the very feetmarks of my shining morning track."

Also like Hosea, I was

"Forlorner nor a musquash if you took and dreened his swamp."

When I reached the house I picked out the kindest-looking chair I could find and fell into it. I don't believe we shall need any more summer wood. Besides, after such a steady winter, we are almost sure to have a hot summer.

Jan. 7.—That fool weasel or ermine was in the trap this morning. You needn't tell me that they are cunning or anything of that sort. By the way, working a crosscut saw isn't nearly so bad a job on the second day. One can get used to anything.

Jan. 11.—My move, is it? Where did you move? Oh!—well, why didn't you say so? I've been waiting for you to move for the past week.

A checker epidemic is now raging in the country. It is affecting people in much the same way as tarantism, or the dancing sickness, affected the Italians in the middle ages. We speak the language of checkers, act the actions of checkers, and even in our sleep we try to make moves on the patchwork quilts. When the boys go to do the chores they jump the swill-buckets over the pigs, and when the girls make pancakes they jump them around the pan instead of turning them. The storekeepers jump the pennies over the quarters when making change, and the bakers jump the buns with the cookies when filling orders. Even the snowflakes seem to be jumping one another as they fall, and then they drift in zigzags towards some mysterious king-row beyond the horizon. The present state of the public mind is shown by the following clipping from the Appin news of The Glencoe Transcript:—"Ed. Laughton and John McMaster have chosen sides for another checker match. Each side has thirteen players, and over 500 games must be played in the next two weeks. The losers must provide an oyster supper and concert in the Town Hall. Every available space in town is covered by a checkerboard."

The outbreak is by no means local. This week some one sent me a copy of The Grimsby Independent, and marked a letter which overflows with Gargantuan mirth and Homeric defiance. It is humorous to the point of libel:—

"A CHALLENGE TO THE FIVE SCOTCH-IRISH JOHNS OF CAISTOR

"There are so many contests now going on, some fool and some legitimate, that the writer thought it would be unique to have one on the checkerboard here in Grimsby. Now, if the Five Johns of Caistor, who have had a checkered career living out in the jungles, viz.: John Young, John Deans, John Warner, John Jackson, and John Leslie, could be induced to leave their lairs for a short time to make some moves on the magic squares (and, by the way, it is the only time some of them do move) we will trim them to a peak. There will be in this contest no houses and lots, pianos, trips to the Falkland Islands, moon, etc., but they will get their paunches well filled with 'Scotch haggis' and potatoes boiled with the hides on; the liquid refreshments men from that burg always carry on or in their person. If they should win, perhaps our other John might give us a trophy out of his rare collection to turn loose in their swamps—"

"'A Hip-pa-con-da-hare
Or a High-ta-ton-ta-toose
A Wolver-ine-achipmunk,
Or Tam-a-ram-a-goose.'—D. Jackson."

If the Grimsby-Caistor match is pulled off I hereby issue a challenge to the victors on behalf of the winners of the Appin tournament. I pin my faith to our local talent. We have some of the most sedentary players in this vicinity that the country has ever produced. They are wearing the bottoms out of the chairs playing checkers, and if a fire broke out when a game was in progress they have their minds so completely concentrated on the moves that they would have to be carried out with the checkerboard on their knees, and they would finish the game in a snowdrift, without noticing that anything had happened. Bring on your champions.

As far as I am concerned, I am forced to confess that I am not making the progress I should. I have too many things to take my mind off the game, and a man can never hope to be a great checker-player if he ever thinks of anything else. The boys have got used to all my tricky moves, and have developed new ones of their own, so that when we play my kings and men are all the time being caught on level crossings.

Jan. 14.—The editorials in the papers urging the farmers to produce more and better foodstuffs, so that they will make more money and reduce the cost of living in the cities, are being read by the farmers with growing wonder. The answer to these eloquent appeals is simply, "What's the use?" Is it possible that the economic writers of the cities have not discovered that the good old law of Supply and Demand is as dead as Competition? The trusts and mergers killed Competition and gave us wasteful methods and high prices of monopoly instead, and now the transportation companies and the middlemen have strangled our old friends Supply and Demand. A point has been reached where our historical societies should be erecting brass tablets sacred to the memory of the economic laws that once governed trade and commerce. It would be a good idea to have these tablets put up on the walls of our parliament buildings, so that our representatives might have constant reminders of the results of granting special privileges to favoured persons and corporations.

But it is hardly exact to say that Supply and Demand are dead. They are simply handcuffed and fettered. According to the papers, Demand is very noisy in the cities, but his twin brother, Supply, cannot rush to his assistance. What's the use? If Demand could only find some way of offering to the farmers those wonderful prices that we hear about it would be surprising to see how Supply would wax strong. When H. H. Vreeland was traffic manager for one of the Hudson River railways that feed into New York he worked out a scheme by which the farmers could reach the city markets with their produce at the least possible expense. The immediate result was that the district through which his railway passed at once became one of the greatest dairying sections in the country. When Demand expressed his needs to the farmers in terms of higher prices, instead of newspaper reports, they adopted better methods at once and doubled and trebled their products. That one act by the traffic manager did more to promote the best methods than could be done by an agricultural college, and his railway reaped the reward in the form of increased freight at a reasonable rate. I am inclined to think that if something were done to enable the farmers to market their products profitably more would be done to promote scientific agriculture than any one dreams. The farmers would then go after education instead of waiting to have it carried to them. It is no answer to say that the farmers should co-operate. They are already co-operating in a Government that should look after their interests. What is the use of telling farmers that they should feed only the best stock when they know that, taking things year in and year out, about all they can hope to get by feeding the best stock is more fertiliser to enrich their land? Once do away with the restrictions that keep Supply and Demand apart, and you will solve both the problem of cheap living and the spread of agricultural education.

Jan. 15.—When one is prepared for it, this zero weather is as delightful in its way as the balmiest season of spring or summer. At no other time of the year is the air so pure and stimulating. Yesterday I had a walk in the forenoon and another at night. In the forenoon the sun was reflected from millions of fresh snowflakes that had sifted down in the night and had not been blown away by the wind. But though the sunlight was dazzling there was not enough warmth in it to start the growth of an icicle on the south side of the house. At first I thought I was not going to see a trace of a living thing except occasional mouse-tracks, but Sheppy, the collie, made a sudden rush and for a moment I saw a black squirrel making a flying leap from one tree to another, where it disappeared into a hole. A little farther on we started a flock of quail, and instead of alighting in scrub of some kind they lit in the tops of the tallest maples. While searching for them where they were perched on the branches I was surprised to see a highholder busily hunting for insects in the rough bark of a maple.

At night I went for another walk and saw the snowflakes glisten by moonlight. As the thermometer stood at nine below zero, I had to maintain a lively pace to keep from being nipped by the frost. Not even an owl hooted and not a sound was to be heard except the rhythmic "gling-glong" of sleigh-bells a couple of miles away. There were as many stars in the snow as in the sky, and the silver moon presided over both with still serenity. In spite of the loneliness and the silence I am not sure but the walk by night was more enjoyable than the walk by day.

Jan. 20.—The January thaw has arrived, and up to the time of writing it has proven itself an entirely competent thaw. It has its work cut out for it, however, and only time will tell whether it is equal to its task. That last snowstorm piled the drifts as high as the fences, choked all the drains and watercourses, and brought everything in the country to a standstill for some days. There was no doubt but winter was with us, and then came signs of a change, though the weather-wise were unable to say with certainty just what the change would be.

"Well, what are we going to have—rain or snow?" became the general form of greeting.

"I can't exactly make out. It may be either," was the invariable reply.

After a day of mild stillness a raw, damp wind began to breathe from the south and nature favoured us with another of her marvellous transformation scenes. Hoarfrost began to gather on everything, but it was not like the hoarfrost of a couple of weeks ago, which crystallised from the still, cold air on every side of everything. This hoarfrost showed like an icy growth on the side of things nearest the wind, delicate fern-like formations, closely packed, that in some cases attained at least an inch in length. The sky was whitish grey, and a white mist veiled everything between the blinding white snow and the sky. Still the result could not be predicted.

"We are going to have a big change of some kind," was the general verdict. "I have always noticed that when things take a few days working up we get something worth while."

Yesterday morning the air became milder, the hoarfrost began to disappear, and presently the snow became "grippy" underfoot. By noon there was a driving mist and the thaw was on. By nightfall, for the first time in weeks, the rain was on the roof. This morning things are dreary in the country, with the ground covered with slushy snow and a dripping sky overhead. One realises what a terrible bore the man must have been who was described as being as "tedious as a great thaw." But wait a moment. A glance through the window shows a driving snowstorm in progress. It looks as if both those who predicted rain and those who predicted snow were right. What is the use of trying to describe country weather anyway? It simply refuses to sit for its picture.

Jan. 22.—Although the fields are bare and deserted there is still much business activity in the country. This is a time of much dealing in horses, both for local use and for shipment. Teams, both heavy-draught and roadsters, are being matched for future use or sale, and this gives rise to much dealing among the farmers themselves. It is seldom that a farmer manages to raise a properly-matched team on his farm, so he must seek among his neighbours for horses of the proper points to match his own. As most of the men who deal in horses are excellent judges of horseflesh, their trading is sharp and discriminating. In this part of the country horses almost have social position, their name, breeding, and history being as well known as their owners'. The experts recognise them at sight, and it is not unusual to hear scraps of conversation like this:

"Was it you that drove along the town line yesterday?"

"Yes."

"I was sure it was your team, but I was not sure it was you that was with them."

To be known by the horse one drives instead of by one's own commanding presence is always something of a shock to one who becomes aware of it for the first time. But it is not surprising. The men who make a specialty of horses know every colt and horse in several townships, as well as, or even better than, they do their owners. When a dealer wishes to get together a carload, he applies to such men and can at once get an idea of the quality and prices of all the desirable horses of any particular class in the vicinity, just as readily as if they were all assembled in a market for his inspection. Then by driving about the country and using the rural telephone he can quickly secure the lot he wants. The matter of preparing horses for the market is not an entirely simple one, and a number of men usually make their profits before the horses reach their final owner. One man may be successful as a breeder and may be depended on for a constant supply of colts. Another may be an expert at breaking colts and bringing out their best qualities. Then comes the shuffle of matching teams. Finally, they pass through the hands of local buyers to the dealers, who ship them to points where there is a demand. One result of this experience and interest in good horses is that some horses from this locality have been prize-winners at the horse shows of New York and Chicago and are now doing high stepping on fashionable driveways of many great cities.

Jan. 23.—The next great European war will be fought by soldiers who have nothing left to fight for but a national debt. It is quite evident to every one watching the progress of events that the only thing preventing a war at the present time is that none of the belligerent nations are prepared. It is also evident that they will not be fully prepared as long as they are able to borrow money or raise it by taxes in order to build Dreadnoughts and get on the best possible war footing. The great powers of diplomacy are being exerted solely to delay war until the preparations are complete, and they will doubtless delay it so long that the inevitable war will synchronise with a general bankruptcy of the nations. This will give the historians and poets of the future new matter to deal with, and as I speculate on the forthcoming war of universal bankruptcy my imagination is roused. How will the soldiers fight in such circumstances? Will they march into battle, singing:

"How can a man die better
Than facing fearful odds"
For the taxes of his fathers
And the Armour lobby frauds?

That doesn't sound very inspiring, does it? And yet I cannot think of anything else that would be so appropriate.

The article, "War against War," which I wrote some time ago in the Toronto Globe, brought me so many letters that I am impelled to deal with the subject again. Some letters approved entirely, while others were so delightfully sarcastic that I am tingling all over with the joy of battle. I have just read "Horatius at the Bridge" to put me in a vaunting mood, and if you find quotations from it bubbling to the surface you will know what is the matter. After all it may be quite timely to deal with the subject again. At the present writing it is rumoured that the naval bill will be up in Parliament before many days have passed.

"I wis that in the Senate
There was no heart so bold
But sore it ached and fast it beat
When that ill news was told."

It is not likely, however, that we shall have such a battle as raged all over the Hansard last year. It is quite certain that the two parties will be no nearer to agreement than they were a year ago, and that emboldens me to make a suggestion. Of course I do not expect it to be accepted at once, for when I read what editors and statesmen have to say on the subject I am afraid that Mr. Borden is fortified in his own opinions like Lars Porsena:

"There be thirty chosen prophets,
The wisest of the land,
Who alway by Lars Porsena
Both morn and evening stand:
And with one voice the Thirty
Have their glad answer given:
'Go forth, go forth, Lars Porsena;
Go forth, beloved of Heaven.'"

As neither party seems to have the power to put through its policy I venture to suggest an alternative. Instead of giving money or building a navy why should not Canada contribute thirty-five million dollars' worth of wheat? Wheat will be needed just as much as Dreadnoughts or ammunition. We have wheat. Why not give it?

It seems to me that this suggestion embodies all the good features of both policies and has a few good ones of its own. It would be as quickly effective in a case of emergency as a cash contribution, and the money would all be expended here in Canada. Of course, there is the question of Canadians fighting in their own defence, but I shall deal with that later. Now, think it over carefully before arriving at a conclusion. What would be the matter with a contribution of wheat, or, still better, of flour? The chief weakness of Great Britain at the present time is an underfed population. Reliable statistics show that in the British Islands there are over twelve millions of people who are below the hunger-line, who never know what it means to have enough to eat. By making it possible for these unfortunates to be strong and well nourished we should increase the fighting force of the empire by millions. Because no one in modern times has contributed to war funds in this way, the suggestion may seem novel, but in the brave days of old such contributions were frequent. The people gave what they had and gave what would do the most good. Moreover, there is a Canadian side to this suggestion that appeals to me. If our government undertook to buy thirty-five million dollars' worth of wheat, to mill it and ship the flour, they might learn things that would lead to far-reaching reforms. They might find out why Canadian flour is cheaper in London, England, than it is in Winnipeg, and they would learn all about our transportation problems and the shipping combine. Also they would get more reliable facts about the high cost of living than could be dug out by Royal Commissions in ten years. And practically all the war money would be spent with our own farmers, millers, and railways, and in that way would stimulate our basic home industries. Now, do not all speak at once. Stop and count thirty-five millions before scolding me for my wheat-giving suggestion.

As for doing our own fighting, I think every red-blooded Canadian is in favour of that. But we should not think of fighting except in self-defence. Those who would undertake our fighting should be men with a deep-rooted horror of war, who would be willing to fight to put an end to it. The great trouble with all the suggestions for warlike preparedness that I have seen is that they are full of the pride, pomp, and poppy-cock of old-fashioned war. There is no true glory in war. The killing of men, even in self-defence, is a hideous necessity at best. But if it must be done, let it be done without fuss and feathers. If we cannot be prepared for war without indulging in strutting and tinsel, there is something wrong. I think history will bear me out in the statement that the great fighters were men with a great purpose, rather than with elaborate training. Without referring to cases in recent history where embattled farmers—men without training and devoid of the love of glory—held in check the best trained troops, let us consider for a moment the "crop-eared boors" led by the brewer, Cromwell. Having a great purpose, they developed into the renowned Ironsides, perhaps the most efficient group of fighting men that England ever produced. Glory was no part of their creed, and if we should ever be compelled by aggression to put men in the field they should be men of that kind. I would have no criticism to make of military training if it taught men to fight only for the rights of humanity. Men should shudder when they think of war instead of bursting into song in praise of its horrible glories.

Jan. 24.—Some recent discoveries have made me wish to publicly abase myself—to admit that in at least some respects I am an old fogy, unobservant and far from being up-to-date. Ever since coming to the country I have been waiting patiently for some of the good old swindles to turn up and to observe just how they are worked. I have been positively yearning for a visit from a book agent who would try to get me to subscribe for the first volume of some one's Compendium of Useless Information in sixty-seven volumes. The first volume would be only a sample, of course, but there would be a little joker in the order form that would make it a contract for the whole sixty-seven. I hankered to see an order for a force-pump that would later turn out to be an order for a whole crate. After months of waiting I was coming to the conclusion that the men who used to prey on the farmers and rob them of their earnings have either died or reformed. And all the time evidence was lying about me and I couldn't see it. I take refuge under the assertion of a great wit that "Nothing is so hard to see as the obvious." But at last I am wise. Years of city life had dulled my ears to the siren song of the promoter and I did not realise when I heard the same voice in the country that it indicated an old industry in a new form. The fact is that the modern farmer is a business man, and when swindled the work must be done in a business-like way instead of by trickery. He will not consent to be separated from his money except by the methods that are used in the city. When he has a bunch of money that is burning a hole in the stocking—I mean bank—in which it is kept he listens to the glozings of the get-rich-quick man or to the silvery persuadings of the mining promoter. He buys stocks, forsooth, and loses his money like a business man. I am reliably informed that there are successful farmers who could paper the spare bedroom with nicely lithographed little squares of paper, the sight of which would make the house tomcat arch his back and spit because of their wild-cat complexion. When I hear young men discussing the price of wheat, I no longer regard the conversation as a sign of the interest they take in their work, but begin to wonder mildly what bucket-shop they are patronising. Assuredly the times have changed and I had not changed with them, but my eyes are opened. I am no longer waiting for the double-dealing book agent or the deceitful peddler. Instead, I am culling alluring prospectuses from my daily mail and revelling in their financial humour. I thought they were part of the penalty I had to pay for having once lived in the city, but I find they are part of the present features of country life. Thus do we live and learn.

Jan. 25.—Is an open winter a blessing after all? I have heard many people rejoicing because the mild weather made it unnecessary to feed their stock heavily, and those who, like myself, cut their own wood find that there is a great saving in fuel. They say that a winter like the one we have been having is "not so hard on the poor" and that is a good thing, but there is another side to the story. The weather is so changeable that colds and sickness are very prevalent, and because of the bad roads the social life of the country has been at a standstill. There are days when hardly a rig passes, even on a road that lies between two villages, and not since I have come to the country have there been so few public entertainments of any kind. The mild and wet weather leaves the country roads impassable, and that keeps people at home when there is little work to be done. It would be much better if they could be refreshing themselves with the natural enjoyments of visiting and parties. Although most of us dread the steady cold of the old-fashioned winters, I am inclined to think that the steady severe weather is better for us than the kind we are getting. The old-fashioned winters have plenty of sleighing that makes travelling about a luxury, and it always freshens people to mix with their fellows. Although the weather has been mild, this winter threatens to seem unusually long because people are practically prisoners on their farms.

Jan. 27.—Yesterday I saw the largest flock of quail it has ever been my pleasure to look at. I counted twenty-two, and they made a pretty picture as they scurried across a stubble-field feeding on the seeds of weeds that had not been buried by the snow. They all looked plump and vigorous, and unless something untoward happens they should winter all right. I know where there are nine more flocks and all are within a mile of where this is being written. As I was at one time an enthusiastic hunter of quail it gives me a pleasant glow to realise that, with such abundant opportunities at hand, I came through the hunting season without being tempted to do them harm. Of course there is a little matter of rabbits, but rabbits are something of a nuisance, given to girdling young trees and rose bushes. They rest lightly on my conscience.

I am beginning to wonder what the hunters are after. Every day I hear shooting in the woods, and I am at a loss to know what game is being pursued. It is now the close season for quail, partridge, and black squirrels, but the guns are banging away as merrily as in the early fall. Once in a while the wind brings evidence that skunks are being killed, and that reminds me that skunk-hunting seems to have risen to the dignity of a profession. One day last fall I saw a couple of well-dressed hunters with guns and dogs passing through a field, and fearing that they might be after quail I went out to warn them off. The one I interviewed was dressed to the minute in puttees, khaki hunting jacket, and prospector's boots. He told me that they were hunting for skunk, and were having a very successful season. They had taken seven on the previous day, and as I understand that good skins are worth from three to four dollars each, the occupation is not unprofitable. They had a tent located a couple of miles away, and were travelling through the country hunting carefully through each district. As neither the dogs nor the hunters gave my nose any evidence of their occupation, there must be some way of killing skunks and "trammelling up the consequences." When an ordinary man undertakes the task it is usually months before either he or his dogs are received in good society. Yesterday a hunter passed through the neighbourhood looking for mink. He said that their skins are worth twelve dollars each this year. This recalls the fact that while in the village recently I saw a young man getting a lot of empty packing boxes, and was told that he was going in for breeding mink and wanted the boxes to make dens for them. With skins at that price, mink farming should rank with the fox farming of Prince Edward Island. Strange to say, although the woods are so nearly cleared off, I have been told that the catch of fur-bearing animals in Southern Ontario is almost as great as it was in the days of the Indians and the Hudson Bay Company. It is some time since I have seen a coon skin tacked up on the end of a wood-shed, but every once in a while I hear a farmer complain that coon hunters have cut down a tree worth more than many coons. As a matter of fact the beavers seem to be the only important kind of fur-bearing animals that have entirely disappeared from the country. It does not increase one's respect for the law of the survival of the fittest to find that such vermin as skunks, weasels, and mink have survived the deer and all the other wild creatures that were in the original forests. I wonder if it is the same with human beings, and that the harder the struggle for existence becomes the more likely we shall be to find the meaner, more cunning and despicable types prospering? Sometimes when I am feeling bilious I am inclined to think that the law of the survival of the fittest works out among human beings the same as it does among skunks.

It is surprising to find how few of the things that were native to the country have really disappeared. Last fall I was asked to write a Christmas story, and in the course of it tried to describe a dinner where pioneer dishes were used. I found it was possible to get all of them except one. Nowhere could I get a trace of the old wild crab apples that grew in the thick woods. The pioneers used to put them away in pits until spring, and then would cook them in maple syrup. I felt quite safe in saying that these wild crab apples had disappeared with the original forest, but when the story was published I found that a housewife living within a mile of me had been putting up wild crab apple jelly about the time I was writing the story. It seems that there is a thrifty wild crab apple tree about three miles from here on the banks of the creek that flows through this farm. This is another thing that shows how foolish it is to be sure about anything. Emerson, in his biographical sketch of Thoreau, tells that the naturalist-philosopher had found, in the neighbourhood of Walden Pond, specimens of practically every kind of plant produced on the continent. He was even able to duplicate samples that had been brought to him from the Arctic circle, and that were not supposed to exist in the temperate zone at all.

Jan. 31.—Last week I opened another silo—I mean trench—of celery, and was surprised to find that I was altogether too hasty in complaining about the pithy growth of the plants. When the work of trenching the celery was being completed we trenched the pithy stuff on general principles, and because we had noticed a few good hearts in the huge bundles of stalks. On opening the trench I stripped away the pithy outer stalks and found in almost all of them large sound hearts. The celery I grumbled about turns out to be the best we have had this year. It is crisp, and tender, and better flavoured than the kind we had been using earlier in the season. But this has been a bad year for trenching celery as it was almost impossible to keep the water drained away from it, and the mice got into some of the trenches. At the same time I am inclined to think that trenched celery, if handled successfully, retains its flavour, and is much more appetising than that which is kept in cellars.

Apples that we kept for the winter are proving interesting in several ways. They were packed in barrels just like those that were shipped, and instead of being put in a cellar were buried in a side hill. Although I hear complaints that apples kept in pits and cellars are rotting badly, ours are coming out as sound as when they were put away. We opened a barrel of Spies last week, and I found only one rotten apple. They were as sound as when they were packed, and it was interesting to find that, although they were tightly pressed, they were not injured. The bruises caused by the pressing had all dried instead of rotting, and the only damage done was to the shape of the apples. As the barrel we opened had been filled with culls, I am inclined to think that the apples shipped must have been of pretty good quality, because these were good enough for any one. The ink spot and scabs, which made it necessary to cull them, have not affected the eating or keeping qualities of the apples, and now when there is no choice fruit with which to compare them they seem more like Fancy No. 1's than like culls. So far I have not found a single worm, and "we eats them cores and all."

[FEBRUARY]

Feb. 2.—Since moving to the country I have been greatly impressed by the spread of education. Those who are set in authority over us seem to think that education is a remedy for everything. If the farmers are not prospering the cry goes forth, "Educate them." When the high cost of living begins to pinch in the cities they trace the whole trouble to the farmer, and then some one yells, "Educate him!" If the farmer complains about the exactions of the middlemen, the answer invariably is "Educate him." No matter what goes wrong, the only solution that occurs to any one is to "educate the farmer."

Once in a while a reporter representing the press, our modern palladium of freedom, calls on a canning magnate and tells him in a deferential tone that the farmers are complaining because he is not paying enough for tomatoes on the hoof and is charging altogether too much for catsup. The great man looks at the paragraphical serf with a baleful eye, scatters some benzoate of soda on a pile of bills, puts them into his vault and snarls: "The farmer is grumbling, is he? Then ejjercate him."

Another trembling representative of the above-mentioned palladium calls on a high financier and tells him that the farmers are complaining because the last issue of watered stock he unloaded on them had typhoid germs in it.

"Oh, they are, are they?" sneers the plutocrat as he packs a tainted million in a deposit vault and wipes his hands on his overalls. "Then why don't you educate them?"

Up to a certain point this attitude is a good thing for the farmer. In the past he has been woefully lacking in education. But now he is being educated so thoroughly that almost any farmer I meet is ready to sit down and have a breezy chat about the way the soil particles are held together by the water menisci or to discuss intelligently the value of (PbHAsO₄) in destroying codling moths. The farmer is getting his education all right, and it is a good thing, even though it might be better adapted to his needs than it is. Moreover, if you would only increase his opportunities a little he would clamour for more education. But that is not what is bothering me.

While I sat on a corner of the voluminous report of the Department of Education meditating on these deep matters in a playful spirit I began to wonder what would happen if the farmers got to thinking, like every one else, that education is a national cure-all. If they once get this into their heads they will want to educate a few other people who are standing in the way of progress. They will want to start night schools in Toronto and Montreal to educate a few plutocrats into right ways of thinking. Does not your imagination kindle at the prospect? The class-room would be the smoking-room of the Millionaires' Club, and the little scholars would be sitting around in large, kind-looking arm-chairs, smoking expensive cigars, toying with slim-necked glasses, and letting their second chins rest comfortably on the bosoms of their dress shirts. Unobtrusive imported waiters would be flitting about noiselessly, taking orders and promoting good cheer. Enter Bill Simmons, instructor in true economic doctrines. Bill's necktie is climbing over his collar, but no one dares to smile, for he is carrying a well-oiled harness tug in his brawny right hand. Hanging the tug suggestively over the corner of the mahogany desk, he takes his place on the costly Ispahan rug, thrusts out his chin truculently, and opens the proceedings with a few well-chosen words. Thus Simmons:

"The House Committee informs me that after last night's session some of the hollow-stemmed glasses were full of cigarette ashes, and that there were cigar stubs in the silver-plated champagne-coolers. Now, I want it distinctly understood that if I catch any dollar-besotted financial degenerate up to tricks like that I shall dust his swallow-tails so that he will eat his meals off the onyx mantelpiece for the next week and then I shall kick him several parasangs down the street. Do you get me?" (Oh, yes, he would talk like that. You have been educating him, you know.) "The class in elementary economics will now step forward."

Prompt at the word Sir Philabeg McSporran, Senator Redneck, Mr. Gosh Whatawad, and a few others step to the edge of the rug, where they stand with thumbs at the seams of their trousers legs, heels together, and their toes well apart.

"Now, my pretty ones," says Bill, "if a railroad is built under a government charter, with the assistance of the public treasury, and is then presented to the company that built it, to whom should that railroad finally belong?"

"To me," pipes Sir Philabeg, who is a High Financier and understands how to manipulate the market.

"Wrong," says our bold bucko from lot 17, seventh concession of Alfalfa township. "It will belong to the peepul—at least sufficiently so to justify them in regulating its operations so that it will serve the best interests of the community. You may go to your seat, Sir Philabeg, and figure it out, and I will come around with the tug in a few minutes and see that you have it right."

Then the grim instructor goes on:

"What is a Big Interest?"

"A corporation that contributes liberally to our campaign fund," says Senator Redneck, with a knowing smile.

"Wrong!" booms Simmons. "The Biggest Interest in this country is farming and after that comes labour—both engaged in producing the real wealth of the country. If any one is to get special privileges the farmers are the ones that should get them. You may go to your seat and figure that out, and I will see you when I get through with Sir Philabeg."

Again Simmons:

"If a farmer builds a new bank barn and silo, how much should he be fined in the shape of taxes for showing so much enterprise?"

And so it would go through the whole educative evening.

Of course it is not likely that we shall ever have any educational developments along the lines suggested, but why not? If education will cure all the troubles of the farmers, why shouldn't it be tried on a few other problems? When the promoters of mergers and combines begin to do things that are against the best interests of the country, why shouldn't the farmers all yell: "Educate them!" When politicians become subservient to the powers that prey on the resources of the country, why shouldn't we all start to "educate them"? It wouldn't be so very hard. A few well-placed votes at the right time would do wonders in the way of giving light and leading to those who are making trouble for us. Let the work of educating the farmers go right on, but I hope the farmers will soon feel that they have enough and to spare, and that they can devote a few hours to educating their leaders. "Educate him" is a beautiful cry for a campaign of education of the right kind, and as there are a lot of people besides the farmers who need education, I hope that it will soon swell to a fine chorus. Don't get mad at the people who are bamboozling you. Just give them a good dose of the medicine they are so fond of giving you. "Educate them."

Feb. 4.—Have you ever noticed how the sounds carry on some winter mornings? One day last week we had a few hours when I felt as if I were eavesdropping on the whole countryside. The air was very still and judging from the way the smoke fell to the ground it was very light. When I went out to do the chores I was struck at once by the clearness with which I could hear things going on. I could hear the neighbours talking to their cattle and somewhere about a mile away an angry man was reasoning with an impenitent pig. I could hear what he said to the pig and what the pig said to him, and judging by what the pig said I think the man must have kicked him while pouring swill into the trough. Every sound started an echo that went bounding over the fields. I could hear a train moving on the Michigan Central Railroad twelve miles away and almost imagined I could hear the people in the town three miles off frying their breakfast bacon and grumbling about the high cost of living. I understand that the carrying quality of the air is due to its being thin or rarefied. According to the papers some inventor has increased the power of the telephone by having the air in the receiver warmed by some new device. The principle on which he works is probably the same as prevailed on this particular morning. The ease with which sounds carried was due to the condition of the atmosphere and that reminds me that at other times the air must be very heavy and dead. Anyway, I know that there are days when I cannot make a boy in the next room hear that the wood-box is empty even when I yell at the top of my voice. Now that must be due to the condition of the atmosphere, and I have noticed that the best way to overcome the difficulty is to warm things up.

Feb. 7.—There seems to be something wrong about Mr. Glendinning's criticism of telephone and rural free delivery at the recent meeting of the Grange. It seems like flying in the face of progress at a time when every one is insisting that we might as well be dead as unprogressive. I have avoided the telephone myself, chiefly because I got tired of it in the city and did not want any one to call me up to talk things over unless I wanted to talk. I have always sympathised with the British in their attitude to the telephone. The best families may have one in the kitchen for ordering supplies, but they refuse to be disturbed by it themselves. When a Britisher goes to his home he wants it distinctly understood that his home is his castle, and when he takes up the drawbridge and lets down the portcullis no one can intrude on him without his permission. I have a very distinct recollection of having an interview with an English business man, and while we were talking the telephone bell on his desk began ringing. Instead of stopping to hear what was wanted he reached out and took the receiver from the hook and placed it on his desk so as to stop the ringing. He would not allow any one to reach him by the telephone any more than he would by letting them enter through the door of his office while he was keeping an engagement. As a contrast to this I remember an advertising man in New York telling me with much glee of being refused admission to a business man and instead of being discouraged he went to the nearest telephone booth, called the man up, submitted his proposition, and got his order. We people of the new world lack the necessary poise to use the telephone properly. When the bell rings we are consumed with curiosity until we know who is speaking and what is wanted. If we could learn the British method of using the telephone only when we need it, instead of using it for gossiping and all kinds of nonsense, and instead of being slaves to its constant ringing, there would be no good ground for objecting to it. There are still a few things that we can learn from the people in the Old Country.

Feb. 9.—What are signs of spring, anyway? when I was out doing the chores this morning the thermometer stood at ten below zero and yet there was a feeling of Spring in the air. The sky and the sunshine had a look of spring and the sparrows were all chirping as if they were talking of the good times coming. There was a hen cackling over a new-laid egg that would be worth its weight in silver on the table of a Toronto millionaire, and about a dozen Leghorns had found their voices again and were making a feeble attempt to scratch in a forkful of straw that lay in the sunshine. And yet, as I have just said, it was ten below zero. When I got up to shake down the coal-stove about seven o'clock it was eighteen below. A little while later when the sun was peeping over the horizon I looked again, and after scratching away the hoarfrost that was settling on everything I found the mercury standing at twenty below. But, of course, the air was so dry I didn't mind it. Still, I didn't stand before the thermometer to think things over. I preferred standing as close to the stove as I could get. It did not seem much like spring just then. Come to think of it, I guess the signs of spring vary considerably. I remember years ago that a man who had moved to Dakota wrote home saying that it was beginning to look like spring out there. He said that the snow was already down to the tops of the windows.

Feb. 11.—I have fully made up my mind that another winter will not catch me so unprepared as this one did. Early in the fall I shall get all my agricultural reports and farm bulletins warmly pitted, so that when I want a basketful of them to help spend the long winter evenings I shall know where to get them. Now when I go to look one up it usually cannot be found, or if it is to be found it is badly frostbitten and weather-beaten. Besides, when they are lying about loose they are in danger of being used for all sorts of things. The other day I wanted to read up on the question of early potatoes, but the pages of the Vegetable-growers' Report were missing. When I finally tracked them down I found that I would have to stand on my head to read them where they had been pasted upside down over a knothole in a shed. The bulletin on Alfalfa is missing too. I remember sitting on the fence reading it one day last fall, and in all probability I left it there while I went to do something else. Of course I intended to pick it up on my way back to the house. We all intend to do things like that, but somehow we seldom do. When I find it next spring it will probably be after a cow has stepped on it. It is a shame to do things in this way, for those bulletins are really valuable. I would feel worse about it, only I know that a lot of good farmers are just as careless about such things as I am.

Feb. 14.—When I read the articles in the papers telling about the high cost of living I am moved to ask why thrifty housekeepers do not buy their supplies in the old-fashioned way and get along without paying the charges and profits of the packers and retailers. Last fall I bought a dressed hog, hunted up a good recipe for curing bacon, ham, and salt pork, and proceeded to prepare the winter supply. I also got a chart showing just how a pig should be cut up for curing, and followed all the directions carefully. By devoting a few hours to the job the winter pork was laid in at a cost of nine cents a pound. The only objection to this method was that the meat was so much better than the kind we had been buying at the stores for from twenty-three to twenty-seven cents a pound that we ate more of it. Encouraged by this experiment, I bought half of a fat heifer—like the man in the old joke we "killed half a cow"—and proceeded to cure the meat according to good recipes. As in the case of the pork, I got plans and specifications for cutting the beef, and followed the blue-print carefully. The beef is turning out as successfully as the pork, and the cost was nine cents a pound for the forequarter and ten cents a pound for the hindquarter. In this weather the roasts and steaks keep without curing of any kind, and besides a supply of corned beef and soup joints there was plenty of material for mincemeat and the old-fashioned "forcemeat" that could be found in any farmhouse in the days when people cured their own meat. This is a luxury I have looked for in vain in even the best restaurants. It is made by chopping together fresh beef and suet, moulding it in little cakes, and putting it away to set. This sounds as if it were a kind of Hamburg steak, but it is not. It has a flavour entirely its own. I imagine it is more like pemmican than anything else. And I mustn't forget the piece that is being spiced and dried. It seems to be coming on fine, and I have no doubt it will be just as good as the kind they charge thirty cents a pound for in the stores. I know all this sounds very carnivorous, but I don't care. I am not a believer in vegetarianism. I cannot forget that Cain was the first vegetarian on record, and we all know how bloodthirsty he got from living on fruits and salads. And the moral of it all is that the cost of living would not be so high if people did not turn over to the butchers and bakers and canners the work of curing and preparing their foodstuffs.

Feb. 16.—I see that there is much being written about the advisability of giving "demonstrations" of proper beef-raising in various parts of the country so that the farmers may be induced to raise better stock. If the men who have this in mind will also arrange to give "demonstrations" of how to sell the finished product at a reasonable profit they may be able to accomplish something worth while.

Feb. 17.—Now is the time to think about reforestation. If you are thinking of planting in the woodlot now is the time to apply to the Department of Forestry for trees. I understand it is a case of first come first served, and you cannot get your order in too early. Of the thousand and eighty trees I planted last spring about eight hundred survived the heat and drouth of last summer. That is sufficiently encouraging to make me apply for twice the number of trees this spring, so as to finish the job of reforestation that I set out to do. The conditions last summer were greatly against the little trees, and yet the result was satisfactory. Above all things, I wish to impress on those who undertake work of this kind the necessity of following to the letter the instructions given by the department. They seem to be about perfect. The way in which the sod is turned up and left beside the tree not only keeps down the weeds and grass, but I noticed in the fall that the hole made by lifting the sod filled in with leaves, and in that way gave the trees a perfect mulching for the winter. I expect to find them all looking fine and hearty when the snow melts in the spring.

Feb. 18.—Well, the farming operations for this year have commenced in earnest. With the Ontario Government acting as my hired man, I propose to do a few things this summer—and to tell all about them. If we succeed we will try to be modest and if we fail we will be frank. What says the poet?

"'Tis not in mortals to command success;
But we'll do more, Sir James: we'll deserve it."

This is how it happened: When I undertook to handle a farm by myself I was immediately confronted by the problem of labour. How was I to get a good, capable hired man to help me with my work? Not being able to solve the problem to my own satisfaction, I wrote to Mr. C. C. James, Commissioner of Agriculture, and put the matter up to him somewhat as follows:—

"From what I have been reading in your bulletins and reports I see no excuse for the man who has a good farm and some capital if he keeps on working in an unprofitable way. That is all very well as far as it goes, but there are thousands of people like myself whom it does not touch. Now, I want to know just what you can do for a man who is trying to farm without capital and with a lame horse that is blind in one eye."

This led to some correspondence, and I told him about the orchard on the place. There are over fifty mature trees of standard varieties that have been yielding occasional crops of fairly good but very wormy apples. Mr. James promptly rose to the occasion and agreed to send an expert to show me how to handle that orchard. This morning Mr. F. M. Clement, B.S.A., representative of the Ontario Department of Agriculture in Elgin county, came and pruned a tree for me and told just what he will do to get results from that orchard. He outlined his part of the work and my part, and we are going ahead. Just watch us.

Before telling of the interesting day I had with Mr. Clement I want to give some idea of the trouble many good people thought I was making for myself.

"You'll just find that you will have to work in that orchard all summer if you try to handle it according to the instructions of the Department of Agriculture. They'll make you scrape the trees and whitewash them and prune them and spray them three or four times and fertilise the land and work it every day. There will be no end to the fussing you will have to do."

That was the way they talked, but I just laid back my ears and looked stubborn. I made up my mind I would carry out all instructions, even if I had to work every day and then sit up every night with those trees. They told me that the scraping alone would take me at least three weeks of steady work on trees like those. I would find that those Spies and Baldwins were

"Wild and woolly and full of fleas;
And had never been curried below the knees."

Nevertheless I was willing to curry them carefully, and even to go over them with a manicure set if that were necessary. And now my courage has been rewarded. Mr. Clement showed me how to curry an untamed tree, and estimated that I should be able to go over the whole orchard in two days at the outside. The pruning will take about a week. Then I shall have to devote about a day a week to the orchard for a couple of months. Mr. Clement and his assistant will do the spraying themselves to make sure that it is done right. That doesn't look as if I would not have any time left for anything else. Of course there is no knowing whether the work will pay or not. Unless there are plenty of fruit buds that have not been killed by the severe frosts there will be no crop. We shall have to wait until blossoming time to see what the prospects really are. In the meantime we shall do the necessary work of pruning, scraping, and the first spraying.

During the day Mr. Clement rid me of a few popular delusions. Ever since I can remember I have heard that an orchard will bear only every other year. It seems that this is true only of neglected orchards. Apple trees can be made by proper treatment to yield a decent crop every year. And yet I am not sure that I am rid of this bugbear of orcharding. This orchard has been neglected and it is just possible that this will be the off year. If the fruit buds are not on the trees all the expert work in the world will not make them bear apples. We made a hasty examination of a couple of trees and found some fruit buds, but not enough to make me see rosy visions of big profits. When I go at the pruning I shall examine more carefully, but in any case the treatment that will be given to the trees should insure a good crop next year. That seems to be the way with a whole lot of things on a farm. In order to get results you should have started working last year. I always seem to get started a year too late, but now that I have the Ontario Government shedding wisdom upon me I hope to do better. By the way, there was one thing that I forgot to ask Mr. Clement. I had been warned not to prune the trees during the full of the moon because at that time the bark is loose and the trees would be injured. But as Mr. Clement came on the second day of the new moon I presume he had this in mind. A man who has studied the question of orcharding as thoroughly as he has and has won so high a reputation for good work would never overlook so important a point.

From the above paragraphs you may get an impression that we are having spring weather out in the country. Well, it has been pretty decent for a few days, but at the time of writing the blizzard of the season is raging. Although it was quite mild on Saturday, Sunday, and Monday, and this morning was still temperate enough for us to prune trees, we are having a snowstorm-driven gale from the north-east that is piling such drifts as we have not seen for many a day.

Feb. 19.—I have to thank F. M. Clement, B.S.A., for a kindness he had no thought of doing me. By a chance question he recast all my ideas of farm work. He flung two words at me over his shoulder, and instantly my ideas shifted, like the bits of coloured glass in a kaleidoscope when you shake the tube. He came over from Dutton yesterday to show me how to handle that orchard I have been talking about, and, to begin with, he pruned a tree. While at work, he explained just why he removed one branch and spared another, and told me just what I should have in mind when pruning a tree. Of this part of my experience I shall have nothing to say, for you can get such instructions as he gave in the bulletins or in The Farmer's Advocate. From time to time I asked questions, and tried to figure out just how much hard work I would have to do to get results. I was also figuring how much of the work I could get out of doing without being caught. But he finally completed his task, so that every branch was swinging free and open to the sunlight. Then he climbed down and looked at his work. I was standing behind him. Suddenly he asked, with a backward turn of his head:

"How's that?"

There you have the question that startled me. Simple enough, isn't it? There doesn't seem to be much to it, but wait.

It has been my privilege to stand beside a great artist while he drew aside the curtain from his picture, and then to have him fling the same question at me:

"How's that?"

It has also been my privilege to have poets whom the world acclaims as great, recite their poems to me, and then ask:

"How's that?"

To have the same question flung at me in the orchard was something of a shock. The manner and the tone were the same. I realised that once more I had been asked to pass on something in which a man had expressed himself. The chance question suddenly elevated work to a form of self-expression worthy to rank with the great arts. Ever since I have been able to see possibilities in work—mere work. It is something that a man can engage in as a man, and not simply as a drudge.

"How's that?"

Now the cat is out of the bag. I have let you see that I do not like physical work, and never have. But I am neither humiliated nor ashamed. Why should I like work? I have seen it in almost all its forms, and have practised it in a few. Almost everywhere it is slavish and sordid. I have seen it in the sweat-shops of the big cities, in the factories of the New England States, the mills of the south, and of England, and on the Canadian farms. Always it was wearing, soul-stifling, degrading. Men, women, and children—little children—were being ground to extinction by work. They became old before their time, broken-spirited, deformed. Work is a hideous monster, demanding all we can give of youth and strength and vitality, and giving in return only a starved and meagre living. Seeing work in this way, I learned to hate it. It has "the primal, eldest curse on it." It is slavery of the cruellest kind, and makes slaves of men even where they are their own masters. Do you wonder that I turned to the arts? The arts are joyous, exultant. They enable a man to express himself, and we all hunger for self-expression. The greatest tragedy in the world is to be misunderstood, and we are all misunderstood. The artist makes himself understood—at least, to a select few—but the worker usually dies

"With all his sweetness in him."

But here was a worker who expressed himself by an ordinary piece of farm work. He had laid creative hands on a tree, and it would take form as a picture might under the brush of an artist, or a song on the lips of a poet. He had put into it his conception of what it should be. In that way he gave expression to his own soul, and was willing that the world should look and see. He had enjoyed the task because he had a definite purpose and knew just what he was doing. He got the effect he was after, just as an artist might when working under the stimulus of an urgent inspiration. I looked with new-found admiration, and now the tree has a new meaning to me. I feel that he has revealed to me something of himself, just as did the artists and the poets.

How's that?

Since getting this little flash of light, farm work has looked very good. Farming is a great art, and the artist works with life, rather than with pigments or words. He gets his effects by working in accord with Nature. Surely that is greater than merely imitating Nature, or describing it. And, though I look at farming in this way, I do not regard it any the less as a science or as a money-making proposition. In fact, it should be all the more scientific and profitable by making it artistic. The art puts the joy into it and elevates it above mere drudgery. Mark Twain said that "Play is work that a man enjoys," and I see no reason why many kinds of farm work should not have the charm of play. If we could only go at it in that way, we would accomplish more, and life would be more worth living.

Of course, I quite realise that I am only a beginner at real farming, and that I should remember the text: "Let not him that girdeth on his harness boast himself as he that putteth it off." There is a job of ditching to do that it will be hard to make joyous, but never mind. I have at least seen that farm work can be made fine and ennobling, instead of being a sordid drudgery, and that is worth while, even though I may have to write a poem to express what I mean, instead of cultivating a field so that it will tell what I want to say as clearly as would the verses. I know that a true farmer who was master of the possibilities of the art he practises could do it, and for that reason I shall have a higher respect for farming. I may not be able to do it myself, but my failure will not prove that I am wrong. It will only prove that I cannot do the work as it should be done. Perhaps I have been hating work too long to take it in the right spirit, even after I have discovered its possibilities. But knowing what I do, I shall in future have nothing but pity for the man who can make of farm work nothing better than a dreary round of grinding work, and I am afraid I shall have little respect for the young man who starts at the present time if he develops into a slave. He has a chance that his father never had to make his life worth while. In the meantime, I am going at farm work with the feeling that it is a great art, in which a man can find enjoyment and self-expression, and if I find that I am wrong, I shall not be afraid to tell you so and to shoulder the blame. But if I find that there is both joy and profit in it, I shall certainly have my proper laugh at you who think that my fancies are absurd. I have much to get even for, and I shall not fail to rub it in if I get a chance.

Feb. 21.—George Grossmith has a story that never fails to delight his audiences—in England. He tells, with affected sympathy, of a conversation he once had with an American lady who had seen better days.

"We had everything the heart could wish for," she told him, "until my husband was caught in the panic of '93. His business went to smash in a day. It took every cent we had to satisfy the creditors; but what hurt me the most was that we had to give up the old family mansion." Here she heaved a desolating sigh. "Yes, we had to give up the family mansion. It had been in the family for twelve years."

If you once heard an old British audience laugh at that you would never again doubt that the good people at the seat of empire have a sense of humour. To the solid citizen who can trace back the ownership of his home to some follower of William the Conqueror, who slew the original Saxon owner on the threshold so as to clear the title, all new world pretensions to pride of ancestry and estate are wildly funny. Yet a word may be said in all seriousness in defence of landed pride here in Canada.

No one who has made a study of the pioneers of Ontario can doubt for a moment the inspiration of their toil. They wanted homes. They knew, as generations before them knew, what it meant to be tenants—subject to the whims and oppressions of landlords or their agents. They wanted homes that would be their own, and that would be inherited by their descendants. Their first aim was to secure shelter, food, and clothing for their families. Money-making was not only a secondary matter, but, in most cases, was out of the question. Until the railroads came there were no means of transportation and no markets. What the new clearings produced beyond the needs of the settlers was used to barter for necessities, or was given in payment for labour that cleared more land. In fact, some of the pioneers were as land-hungry as the farmer described by Henry Ward Beecher. His sole purpose in life was to "raise more hogs, to make more money, to buy more land, to raise more hogs, to make more money, to buy more land, to raise more hogs," etc.

An evidence of the home-making purpose of all this toil is the nature of the wills made by the pioneers. In almost every case they left to their descendants tracts of land, rather than money, even though, in many instances, their farms had to be divided into small sections to attain their end. One of the earliest recollections of the writer is hearing some of the old pioneers regretting that it was no longer possible to entail their land so that it would always remain in the family.

How the work of the pioneers went astray is shown by an examination of the present ownership of the land. An inquiry into the history of fifty farms in one district brought out the fact that only eight are owned by descendants of the original settlers. The children raised on these farms have scattered to every part of the earth and their heritage has passed into the hands of strangers. If an old-home-week could bring back all who are living, there would be a notable gathering of lawyers, doctors, merchants, business men, and at least two multi-millionaires; but if the sturdy old home-makers could rise from the graveyard where they lie with their feet to the east, it is doubtful if they would be as cordial to those who sold their birthright, even to advantage, as they would be to those who clung to the land and cherished the name and memory of their forefathers. It is among the latter that one finds the pride of home that makes patriots. Their land means more to them than a source of profit. They know the history of every field, the kind of timber that was on it, and the toil with which it was cleared. They know where the deer runs were, and the beaver dams, and the knolls where the Indians used to camp. There is not an acre but has its little tradition, and they are bound to it all by the sentiments that unite to make a national sentiment. They are not able to trace back their titles to a Domesday Book. But what of it? Their homes have been in their families since they were homes, and perhaps ten generations hence that will be as much a source of pride as if they had been the spoils of warlike conquest.

Feb. 22.—After spending a couple of hours reading bulletins of the Department of Agriculture I felt the need of some light reading, and picked up Mr. Frank Yeigh's little encyclopædia of Five Thousand Facts About Canada. This is a book that deserves the comment that a Scotchman made on the dictionary: "It has bonny tales, but they're unco short." Here is one of the little tales that fairly staggered me:

"Ontario ranks higher than any other province in field crops, being nearly forty per cent. of the whole, fairly double that of the next important, and greater than the three grain-growing provinces of the North-west combined."

Now, what do you think of that? I thought that, when compared with the clamorous west, we were raising only chicken-feed, and hardly enough of that. Here are a few more little tales that should be framed in every house in Ontario, and that all the school children should be forced to commit to memory:

"The value of agricultural produce has increased 60 per cent. during fifteen years.

"Three-quarters of the dairy produce of Canada comes from Ontario.

"The province produces 75 per cent. of all fruits grown in Canada, 60 per cent. of the plums, 70 per cent. of the apples, 80 per cent. of the small fruits and pears, and 99 per cent. of the peaches and grapes."

We should find out where that other peach tree and grape vine are and buy them up so that we could claim the whole 100 per cent. On top of all this we get these two amazing statements:

"There are about twenty million acres of good arable land left for settlement south of the 50th parallel of latitude.

"Ontario received in 1909-10, 46 out of every 129 of the total immigration into Canada."

As the total immigration for 1910 was 325,000, one cannot be blamed for asking why Ontario did not get more settlers. This province seems to be badly in need of a press agent. And why, in the name of all that is sensible, should any one want to leave Ontario when it offers such opportunities? If they must wander, why not wander about in Ontario? Let the people who are now having their sale bills printed and putting "owner removing to the west" at the bottom give some thought to these facts before it is too late.

Feb. 24.—I have received so many inquiries about the education of Sheppy the collie that it seems time to report progress, although there has been very little. Sheppy is willing to go to the barnyard without being dragged by a rope. He has even gone so far as to drive one cow across the yard, but it's seldom long before he remembers something and bolts back to the house. I am beginning to wonder if this is not a case where corporal punishment would be justified. Moral suasion seems to have no effect. And every day he is developing so much steam that he is in danger of getting into trouble unless he finds some useful outlet for his energies. Every day he has an outburst that would raise the countryside if these were the dog-days. He will start running wildly around the house, barking, with his head down, snapping at posts and trees, and he will keep up the performance for several minutes. Then he will stop as suddenly as he started and come up to any one who has been watching, evidently wanting to be petted and praised for his performance. Some people might think he was going mad, but I am convinced that his case should be diagnosed as Mr. Bumble diagnosed that of Oliver Twist. "It's meat." He is living too high and is in need of work. He is becoming quite expert at catching mice in the fields, but that is hardly the proper occupation for a dog with a pedigree. I know he should be trained to look after the children like those dogs we sometimes read about, but he gets altogether too much fun out of pulling off their caps and mits and running away with them to be allowed any position of responsibility. Oh, well, he'll grow old and be a serious dog quite soon enough. I guess I'll let him enjoy himself while he can. It is really worth while having one bit of irresponsible joyousness frolicking about the place. No one can look at Sheppy without accepting his invitations to have a play with him, and that of itself justifies his existence.

Feb. 25.—The quail seem to be wintering in good shape.

Yesterday a flock of over a dozen was seen, and when we were tapping a few trees in the sugar bush I saw tracks in the mud where it had been thawed by the heat of the sun. Although the quail here did not come up for their feed regularly, they always came after storms, and they had good old-fashioned shelter in the shape of brush heaps. I know where there are two more flocks in the neighbourhood that have been getting their feed regularly every day for months. The prospects are that we shall have plenty of quail this year. I am afraid the doves and meadow-larks have been killed by the storms. I never see them in the fields any more, and a short time ago Sheppy was seen playing with a dead meadow-lark. The crows have been with us most of the winter, though they kept very quiet. On the fine day when we tapped one was perched in the topmost branch of a "stag-topped" maple, and his tones were positively argumentative. I don't know whether he was trying to tell us that spring is at hand or was trying to tell us that we were rushing the season. Anyway he seemed very much in earnest. Outside of the crows, a few blue jays, and the sparrows, the country is wholly without bird-life. The snowbirds have disappeared, and so have the hawks that were hovering around most of the winter. I think I saw a grosbeak a few days ago, but I am not sure. Nevertheless the time has come when every one should be spouting Roberts' lines:

"Hark, the migrant hosts of June,
Marching nearer, noon by noon!"

The spring and the birds will soon be with us again, and I am glad of it. I am perfectly willing to confess that I am thoroughly tired of this long winter.

Feb. 26.—Land of Good Neighbours! How will that do as a descriptive title for Canada? We have heard much of the "Land o' Cakes" and something overmuch of the "Land of the Free and Home of the Brave." Why should we not have a title of our own that is at once descriptive and true? Canada is, above everything else, a land of good neighbours. If the pioneers had not been good neighbours the country would never have been settled and cleared. The almost superhuman work of clearing away the forests was not done by individuals, but by neighbourhoods. Every field was the scene of a logging bee, where good neighbours helped to roll the logs into heaps for the burning. No man could do such work unaided, so all worked together. Not only did this accomplish needed work, but it led to much social intercourse, mutual helpfulness, and enduring friendships. No one who has burrowed in the history of pioneer days or listened to the stories of the few and scattered survivors can help being struck by the neighbourly spirit that evidently existed everywhere. Was any one sick, the neighbours gathered and put in his crops for him or reaped it, as the case might be. Was a newcomer in need of seed grain, a neighbour would lend it and wait till harvest for his pay. Before the introduction of labour-saving machinery practically all heavy work was done by bees. They had logging bees, reaping bees, threshing bees, sewing bees, spinning bees, quilting bees, and bees for every kind of work. Both the men and the women helped one another in this way. Circumstances forced the pioneers to be good neighbours, and the results they achieved showed that they did their duty by one another.

"What men they were—the pioneers!
So stout of heart—and able!
They bore themselves like men of might
At work—and at the table!
They chopped and burned—and cheered their souls
With many a deep potation!
They bore themselves by day and night
Like builders of a nation.

Chorus—

They worked their will and ate their fill,
And rested from their labours.
God bless them all, both great and small,
Who made our Land of Good Neighbours!
Was one too weak—they'd give a lift!
Was seed grain lacked—they'd lend it!
Was there a row—the minister
Would lecture them and end it.
In summer heat and winter cold
They did their duty roundly;
They lived and died like men of faith,
And now they're sleeping soundly.

Chorus.

Let those who reap the fields they sowed.
The softer generations,
Pay homage to the brawny men
Who laid the first foundations!
Just now we're full of youth and pride,
But maybe when we're older
We'll honour those who made our land
With shoulder set to shoulder.

Chorus."

One thing that made for a good neighbourly spirit in pioneer days was the fact that the struggle of life placed every one on an equal footing. It was like a battle where the officers are compelled to dig in the trenches with the men. Gentleman's son and peasant worked side by side, and it often happened that the peasant succeeded best because he was more fitted to endure hardships. With the increase of prosperity and the introduction of labour-saving machinery the neighbouring spirit sank to the level it holds in other countries. As the country was cleared logging bees were no longer necessary, and the introduction of the reaper did away with the reaping bees. Woollen mills did away with wool picking, carding, and spinning bees, and similar changes took place all along the line. The threshing bee is practically the only survivor of the old forms of neighbourhood work, and it is only a shadow of what it was. Improved threshing machines with steam power enable five men to do in a day the work that was formerly done in three days by five teams and fifteen men. Prosperity also brought social cleavage, and I have been assured that the introduction of the first organs did much to break up the neighbouring spirit. The girl who got an organ put on airs which provoked much envy and heart-burning. Then prosperous farmers could hire the help they needed and became independent of neighbourly help. Because of these things the neighbourly spirit of the pioneers died away in the second generations.

In spite of all this the neighbourly spirit is far from being dead in the country. Indeed it seems to be enjoying a new lease of life, and all because of the introduction of the rural telephone. It is now so easy to call up a neighbour and have a chat, to arrange for an evening together, a little party or a dance to help pass the long winter, that social life is becoming livelier than ever before. This new neighbourly spirit is social rather than helpful, and extends itself over a wider range of territory. The telephone makes neighbours of people who are living miles apart, and it is possible for those of congenial tastes to keep in touch as never before. Many people who are in every way admirable do not get along well as neighbours. Emerson and Thoreau were both admirable men, but it is more than suspected that as neighbours they were not a success. There is a story of doubtful authenticity in which Emerson is reported as saying of Thoreau: "We all love Henry, but we don't like him." The world is full of people whom we are forced to admire for their abilities and love for their good qualities, but with whom we should not enjoy sustaining the relationship of neighbours. Others are not fitted to be good neighbours. There was once a trapper who had his hut on a mountain side where he could overlook the whole surrounding country. He may have been an excellent man, but he lacked the neighbourly spirit, for when he saw a prairie schooner passing within ten miles of him he moved back farther into the wilderness, because, he complained, the place was getting too crowded for him.

It used to be said of some people that they saved money all summer so that they could go to law with their neighbours in the winter. Such people are not so much in evidence now, as all the line fence disputes have long since been threshed out and settled by careful surveys. Perhaps the worst type of neighbour to be found at the present time is the man who is all the time hunting for "snaps"—the man who is continually on the look-out for chances to drive hard bargains with neighbours who may be pressed for money and obliged to sell stock or produce at a sacrifice. The man who adds trading to his work as farmer is seldom a good neighbour. His sharp dealings can set a whole community by the ears. In the country people seem to have long memories, and a piece of sharp practice is often remembered and resented by the second and third generations. Still, if one can look at the matter philosophically, even bad neighbours have their usefulness. Shakespeare says:

"There is some soul of goodness in things evil,
Would men observingly distil it out;
For our bad neighbour makes us early stirrers,
Which is both healthful and good husbandry:
Besides, they are our outward consciences,
And preachers to us all, admonishing
That we should dress us fairly for our end.
Thus may we gather honey from the weed,
And make a moral of the devil himself."

Feb. 28.—We have had a fox-hunt. When we first heard of a fox in the neighbourhood, I mourned my lack of enthusiasm, and glanced back with regret to the days when I would have pursued it to the death. When in that philosophical mood I made the usual mistake of overlooking one important factor of the problem. It did not occur to me that the enthusiasm and faith that I had lost might still be burning in the heart of youth. Although I had no intention of hunting the fox, I had promptings of the old hunting spirit, and almost every time I crossed a track in the woods I would follow it as long as it did not wander too far from the direction in which I was going. One of these little tracking expeditions led me to a hollow oak stump, which the fox evidently used for a den from time to time. I looked into the hollow to see if Mr. Fox was at home, but he was not. But I found evidence of his recent occupancy in the half-eaten body of a rabbit. This dispelled the last lingering doubt that the tracks were those of a fox, and when I told about my find the fat was in the fire. The boys were at once at a fever heat, and I had to promise that we would go after the fox the first thing in the morning. After that was settled they began to dispute about what they would buy with the price of the skin. As I think it over now I know I should have improved the occasion by telling them the story of the man who sold the lion's skin while the lion was still wearing it, and was eaten by the lion when he came to get it, but it did not occur to me. Somehow I never think of improving lectures at the proper time.

In the morning I was surprised to have the alarm clock go off while I was still sound asleep. I usually wake up a few minutes before it is time to get up, and simply use the alarm clock to confirm my suspicions. It is easier to have it tinkle a little than to get up and light a match to see the time. Though I felt in my bones that there was something wrong, I got up and found that the alarm clock had been tampered with. In their eagerness to get a proper start the boys had set it half an hour earlier. Being up I decided to make no protest, but to get even in another way. It was only necessary to whisper "fox" to the boys to get them out of bed and into their clothes, with a haste that would have been absolutely impossible on a school morning. Before starting we had to do the chores, and I got even about the alarm clock by slipping in a few extra chores that had been hanging over my head for a couple of weeks, and they were all done without complaint. This taught me a little lesson about getting things done that I shall probably make use of later on. When there is a bunch of work that I want to get finished quickly and uncomplainingly I shall organise a whale-spearing expedition to the government drain, or a wild-cat hunt among the little trees that we planted in the woods last spring. As we live we learn, and it is sometimes a great help to learn a few of the things we have forgotten about boy nature.

When the dawn became bright enough for us to be able to see the sights on the rifle, we started across the fields to the woods. There were sparrows at the stable, but we did not bother with them. We were after big game, and sparrows did not interest us.

Passing through a patch of withered weeds we saw a lot of rabbit tracks and that made us pause, for rabbits are not to be despised, especially when you haven't managed to get one in a long time. We spent a few minutes in trying to disentangle the tracks, but were finally forced to the conclusion that the rabbits had all gone home to sleep. There was a moment of excitement when we saw a red squirrel, but as it was the only one that had been seen in the neighbourhood for over a year, I would not allow it to be molested. Anyway, he was a pretty wise red squirrel, for he got himself under cover within about ten seconds, and in that way settled the argument in my favour. Although red squirrels are usually impudent and saucy, this one was not taking any chances with human beings who were out so early carrying a gun. After leaving the red squirrel, we plodded straight to the woods where we found the little covering of snow full of tracks of many kinds. There were places where the black squirrels had been hunting for beechnuts so industriously that it looked as if a drove of pigs had been rooting around. Overhead in the trees a flock of blue jays were scolding and squawking, and as I could not remember whether blue jays are of the beneficial birds that should be protected we gave them the benefit of the doubt, and did not shoot at them, although they frequently offered tempting targets. A big hawk sailed out of the top of a tree before we were within range, and, anyway, we would not have shot at him, for hawks now have an excellent reputation on account of the work they do in killing mice. We had not gone far before we found the tracks of the fox, and then the real hunt began. It might have been much more exciting had it not been for a slight thaw on a previous afternoon which enabled us to see that all the fox tracks were, at least, a day old. Still they were fox tracks, and we scouted about hunting for new ones, but without success. Beside a fence near a briar patch we found a rabbits' playground. There was a little space about a rod in diameter where the snow was beaten hard by their little feet. We remembered that in one of his nature stories Charles G. D. Roberts tells how the rabbits come to such places on moonlight nights, and jump around and slap the snow with their flat hind feet in the progress of some strange games that are popular with rabbits. Only a couple of times before have I come across playgrounds of this kind. They seem to be about as rare as the dancing floors of the elephants. But we were after the fox, and did not stay to study the exhibition. As we were unable to find fresh tracks I led the way to the hollow stump referred to above, and we held an inquest on the remains of the rabbit. The work was unquestionably that of a fox, but where was he? In feverish haste we crossed and recrossed the little patch of woods, investigating every stump and hollow log that might give shelter to a fox. Although there were tracks everywhere they did not seem to lead anywhere. At one log we found skunk tracks, but after a careful consultation decided not to visit the little housekeepers. We would just make a purely formal call, and not try to establish either friendly or unfriendly relations. None of us felt inclined to take the risk of being forced to live as a hermit—the usual fate of an inexperienced hunter who tries conclusions with a specimen of "Mephitica," sub-family "Mustelidae." We called him his scientific name and let it go at that.

When we came to the tree where the chicken-killing hawks have had their nest for years, and persist in keeping it, although we shoot them up every summer, we were interested to find that the tree was dead, and that last summer the hawks had fooled us by building a new nest in the bushy top of a big tree near by. It seems that hawks never nest in a dead tree, possibly because it does not give them sufficient cover, or because there is a danger of the dead limbs breaking and letting the nest tumble to the ground. By this time we had been forced to the conclusion that we were not going to find the fox, and the comments of the blue jays were so insulting that it was hard to keep from taking a shot at them. And then, and then—we headed straight for the house, and all burst through the door together asking in eager tones, "Is dinner ready?" If we didn't find the fox we found a fox's appetite.

Now there may be some people who will be so short-sighted as to think that we did not have a fox-hunt at all. That is all wrong. One of the greatest truths of philosophy is that the reward is all in pursuit, and not in the achievement. Men who win success invariably tell us that it is as disappointing as the apples of Sodom, but the struggle for success is always stimulating and develops character. The fact that we did not get the fox greatly improved the philosophic value of our hunt. When they grow older I shall explain this to the boys, but at present they are too much disappointed at not getting the fox to appreciate the lesson.

[MARCH]

March 1.—This has been a great winter for signs in the sky. We have had halos around both sun and moon, and both parhelia and paraselenae. (I looked those up in the dictionary. If I had not I would have called them sun-dogs and moon-dogs, but there is nothing like being scientific and correct.) I always understood that such things were signs of storms, but this year they did not seem to work right. We would have these exhibitions, and there would be no noticeable change in the weather.

In all the illustrations of these things that I have examined the straight lines that combine with the circles always run parallel to the horizon or at right angles to it. But one day a couple of weeks ago there was a halo around the sun that had a bright tangent line that was inclined towards the horizon at an angle of forty-five degrees. This moves me to say to the scientists, as my boys say to me: "Now, why was that?" Of ordinary sun-dogs at both sides of the sun and even above and below it we had many, sometimes with halos and sometimes without. Though I have often seen halos around the moon, this winter is the first time I have seen moon-dogs. They are the same as those around the sun, only fainter and without colour. Sometimes the sun would go down with a straight line reaching up from it like the tail of a comet. I am told that all these manifestations are due to ice crystals in the upper air, and I have no doubt there were plenty of them this year. But I should really like to know if that slanting line was good form. The books give no pictures of such lines, and say nothing about them.

To-day the boys and I took a walk to see how the wild things are wintering and were disappointed to find no trace of the quail. There is one corner where there are weeds and briars that seemed to be their favourite shelter and feeding ground, but there was not a track to be seen. On making inquiries I find no one has seen them or any trace of them since the blizzard a couple of weeks ago. Before that there were two flocks on the farm, one of nine birds and one of sixteen. As they had brush-heaps in which to find shelter I thought they would come through the winter all right, but the deep drifts must have buried them somewhere. We used to be able to find their tracks at any time we looked for them and often we would flush the birds themselves. But though the quail have disappeared the mice do not seem to have been affected. Their tracks are everywhere, and in the edge of the woodlot we found a dead mole that had evidently found its way to the surface, only to be overcome by the cold. We saw one black squirrel that dodged around a big maple until we divided into two parties and went yelling around the tree in opposite ways. Then it jumped into a hole. While crossing a field we found an unaccountable track. It was merely a long straight line in the snow such as a boy makes with the whip when driving in a cutter. But there were no tracks beside it. We decided to investigate and after following the line about fifty yards came to a spot where an owl or hawk had stopped to tear up a rabbit. It had evidently been flying low with it, so that it dragged in the snow. We then followed the line in the opposite direction, where we found in the top of a corn-shock the form in which the rabbit had been sitting when captured. It must have been there for some time, for there were no rabbit tracks, though it was two days since the snow had fallen. Its enemy had swooped down on it and lifted it out of the form, but found it too heavy to carry to a tree, so stopped and had its meal on the snow.

Although it is over two weeks since Mr. Clement was here to show me how to prune the orchard, there have been only two days when it was possible to work at the trees. Zero weather with high winds makes tree climbing about the coldest job that a man can tackle. Still there are twenty thoughtfully pruned and carefully scraped trees awaiting his inspection. If the weather moderates a little we shall soon be able to finish the job, for we seem to have got the hang of it. But though I feel sure that I have followed his instructions as I understood them, I am worrying about it just as a schoolboy does about his homework. I want him to come and look them over and say whether they are right. It will soon be time for him to come again and do the first spraying, but everything depends on the weather. This winter seems to be in for making records of all kinds and there is no telling when it will be through with its tricks. But as soon as it gives me a chance I shall finish the pruning and await my fate. If he says that I did not do the work right I shall have to own up to it, and I hate to do that just as much as any one else.

March 4.—Having just read eighteen pioneer biographies and several pioneer novels of the approved kind, in which everything ends happily, and the hero goes into the ministry in the last chapter, I am tempted to-day to invite everybody to go back over fifty years with me and see what an old-fashioned spring in the woods was like. There is nothing to keep us here, anyway. Outside there is an east wind blowing. The day began with sleet and is ending with slush, and the drive to the post office was anything but a "joy-ride."

The impression I have gathered from the stories I have been reading is that a late spring in the old days was a real hardship. It meant more than a delay in getting in crops and spoiling the chances for a money-making harvest. The great question with the settlers during the first few years was not money, but food. A late spring meant, time and again, that they were forced to eat their seed grain and seed potatoes in order to preserve life. I have just read about one pioneer, and not one of the unthrifty kind either, who was forced to dig up the potatoes after they were planted in order to feed his family. In spite of all this, one of his sons is now an eminent doctor and another a banker. When spring came to the woods there might be a few people who were glad to see the flowers, but there were more whose first search was for leeks, cow-cabbage, nettles, and other pot-herbs. Many had to live for months during the winter on potatoes. Those who could afford pork and oatmeal were already on the high-road to prosperity, and to many wheat bread was a luxury. The more I read and learn about pioneer life the more I am forced to the conclusion that much of the courage shown was the courage of despair. Having moved into the wilderness and built their log huts, there was absolutely nothing for them to do but to maintain life by every possible means. Many of the settlers were scores of miles from any place that could make a pretence to civilisation. Even if they struggled out, what could they hope for without money? The hospitality of civilisation soon wears thin to the penniless, and, even if they were too proud to confess failure, they would soon find that it was better to depend on the sometimes niggardly bounty of nature than on the bounty of fellow-men whose condition was but little better than their own. When men and women had to depend on the spring for food, as well as for warmth and opportunity, they had some reason to be despondent if she lingered a little longer than usual in the lap of winter.

When the spring finally came the settler was in many cases a prisoner on the patch of high ground which he had started to clear. It was not until government drains had been put through that there was much thought of clearing the low ground. If any of this low ground was cleared it was left under grass, the native redtop. For at least a month every spring it would be flooded most of the time, but I have been told that this flooding fertilised the ground, and that the hay crops were more wonderful than anything we see to-day. Even though the snow might melt during winter thaws, the water remained in the swamps, and when the spring "breaking-up" really began the country became a series of islands. I know of one place not a mile from here where there is now a good gravel road that is passable at any time of the year. Fifty years ago people who had to pass that way were forced to use a raft for about three-quarters of a mile during the spring floods. That was on a public road, of course, and was a great improvement on the blazed trails through the woods which most people had to use. A pretty custom of those days was to have a pole wherever the trail crossed a creek or water-hole. The foot passenger was supposed to take this and vault over the water. No wonder vaulting with a pole used to be one of the popular sports on the Queen's Birthday and at the Fall Fair. Though the girls did not take part in the public exhibitions, I am assured that in the depths of the forest they often showed themselves just as expert as their brothers. Careful people when going on a journey of any length through the woods in the springtime took with them a strong, slender pole that they could use for balancing themselves when making their way through the swamps on fallen logs or to vault with when necessary. Another favourite way of crossing the old creeks was on logs, and as it was seldom that any one took the trouble to flatten them, considerable skill was needed by those who attempted a passage. And that reminds me of a story. One spring many years ago two young men were paying court to the same girl. Both had to cross the creek that wound before her home, and one of them had a bright idea. As soon as it was dark he hurried to the creek, carrying a pail of soft soap. Straddling the log, he worked his way backwards across and spread the slippery soap lavishly on the little bridge over which his rival was to follow. He then washed his hands and went to the house to press his suit. About an hour later he was quietly gratified to hear a loud splash in the swollen stream. This put so much courage in him that he pleaded his cause with complete success. Some time about midnight he tore himself away from his future bride and was so exultingly happy that he forgot all about the soaped log. There is no need telling you what happened.

Another thing that made the old-time late spring a disaster was the need of clearing the land. It was during the winter that most of the chopping was done, and in the spring the brush and log heaps had to be burned off before any crop could be put in among the stumps. If the spring was late it was often hard to get the seed in the ground early enough.

About the only relaxation of those spring days when settlers were imprisoned on their islands was that of yelling. The young fellows, when they started out to "browse" their cattle in the morning, would let out a lusty whoop just to tell their neighbours that they were alive. Others would answer them, and the "Good-morning" yell would pass through a settlement in much the same way that cock-crowing does now. You know how that goes if you ever happen to be awake early enough. First you hear a faint crowing away to the east. A few seconds later you hear it a little nearer, and almost before you realise what is going on your own pet Leghorns are hard at it. Then the crowing comes from the nearest barnyard to the west, and presently the noise dies away faintly in that direction. Possibly the cocks are telling one another that all is well, just as the settlers did.

What was perhaps the greatest hardship of all was mentioned in only one of the pioneer stories I have been reading. Possibly the reason why nothing was said about homesickness was that, while these stern people felt it, they considered it a weakness to be ashamed of. Yet homesickness is a very real sickness with a fine Latin name—nostalgia—and only a short time ago I read about American soldiers in the Philippines dying from it. The other day a young English emigrant in Toronto was so homesick that he stole a bicycle so that he might be deported. His case was one for a doctor rather than for a magistrate, but in the old days there was no deportation. If there had been some of those husky first settlers would have stolen the governor's mansion if necessary so as to get home. When conditions were at their worst in the old days in Ontario even a cave-dweller would have got homesick, but we who were born here know nothing of this, and it is just as well. Now let us get back to our own late spring and be thankful. Still I don't want any more people telling me that this is nothing to springs they have known, and that they wouldn't be a bit surprised if we had another month of wintry weather. As the old proverb puts it: "Beware the fury of a patient man."

March 5.—More than once when coming in with an armful of wood that was cut and split just to keep the fire going, I have heard the remark: "If we ever get a year's wood cut, split, and piled, I shall have a photographer come and make a picture of it." So when word came that the buzz-saw men would be in the neighbourhood in a few days I felt a longing to see one of these pictures myself. I felt that it would be a great joy to take the bucksaw and axe and put them away in some safe place and then forget where I had put them. For almost a year we had been preparing spasmodically for a day with the buzz-saw. All the tops and little trees that we bought last winter had been cut and most of them had been hauled to a knoll in the woods and piled. But there was still a full day's work to do at hauling up the larger logs and skidding them in a heap. Having in my mind's eye a picture of that year's wood neatly piled and of an axe and bucksaw losing the brightness that comes from constant use, I agreed cheerfully to help at the skidding. Although the snow was a trifle deep, it was an ideal day for such work. The logs slipped over the ground as if they were greased and the air was too frosty for the snow to melt on your clothes. The woods protected us from the wind that whirled the snow in ghostly drifts across the fields and the work was hard enough to keep us comfortably warm. But before "snaking" up the logs we had to provide ourselves with handspikes, and that showed me how thoroughly the cattle have been destroying the forests. There was not a sapling to be found that was small enough to make a handspike. Every seedling that had sprouted in the past forty years had been nibbled down by the cows and sheep that had been allowed to run in the woods. We had to make handspikes from the straightest limbs we could find. They were not like the blue beeches and ironwoods of earlier days, but they served our needs. The logs were not very big, anyway, and a two-inch handspike made from a maple limb can stand all the muscle I have to spare for heavy work.

Skidding up logs is not what you would call steady work. It is spasmodic, and it is the spasms that catch a fellow. While we were laying the first tier it was comparatively easy. It was no particular trick to pry loose the logs so that we could get chainhold, and most of my time was spent in walking from the pile to the scattered logs, with the handspike over my shoulder. I felt quite primitive, and thought I was getting a better appreciation of what it meant to be a pioneer. But the second tier made a difference. The logs had to be rolled up on skids, and that meant some moments of heavy lifting, pushing, and heaving with the handspikes. No matter how skilful a man may be at "soldiering" and at taking the little end of the log and doing the grunting while the other man takes the big end and does the lifting, there are bound to be times when he will have to put out every ounce of his strength to keep about a ton of maple from falling back on top of him. After one of those strenuous moments I suddenly remembered a triumphant phrase of cunningly wrought coarseness that described the effort I had put forth with a vigour and accuracy far beyond the possibilities of the vocabulary I am now using. I had heard it long ago from a moss-backed ruffian who had been lifting one of the old horsepowers they once used with thrashing machines. It was a phrase of more than Elizabethan frankness, but somehow it did not seem so bad out in the woods in connection with fierce physical action. Its robust humour could have been conceived only by an imaginative pioneer who knew hard work in all its phases, but, though everything connected with the pioneers is of interest to me, I am afraid I must allow that phrase to pass into oblivion. Still it had its value, for it reminded me of the fact that there were men among the makers of Canada whose mental attitude would be more thoroughly appreciated by Burns than by Longfellow. Clearing the land was not a pink tea affair, and it is not surprising that some of the rough diamonds who did the work described it with brutal frankness.

The supreme moment of the day came after we had heaved a big, cranky, bowed log into its place at the top of the pile. A couple of times it almost slipped back, but by heaving and straining we made it go up. When it was in its place and we stopped, panting and breathless, I could see stars in every direction. My brain was absolutely vacant—every thought and idea crushed out of it, just as you might squeeze water out of a sponge. While the other man drove away to get another log I sat down to recover myself. Then came the flush of exaltation that always comes to every one when something has been accomplished. I was strangely in accord with the world of effort in which we are living. Not thinking, but accepting all things, for one great moment I was exalted above the struggle. Somehow the things that I often rage against seemed intelligible and part of one great plan that is working out for the good of all. It was

"A momentary taste
Of being from the well within the waste."

Thinking it over afterwards, I understood what Thoreau meant when he wrote:

"I moments live who lived but years."

But it was some time before definite thoughts came back to me. Almost unconsciously I began noting my surroundings as part of a great picture or mood that I would wish to remember. I saw the grey sky and the snowflakes sifting down between me and the trees. I noticed a woodpecker busy on a lichened trunk and heard the distant clamour of cattle.

But when I thought from all things
A perfect charm was caught.
The little winds came begging
Lest they should be forgot.

In spite of the momentary physical exhaustion the feeling experienced was one of joyousness—a joyousness that comes to all men who accomplish a task, however humble. It was probably such moments that Bergson had in mind when he wrote:

"We seek efficiency, or, perhaps, it would be truer to say that we seek the immediate product of efficiency, which is joy. Joy is not pleasure, but the satisfaction of creation. Making money gives pleasure, no doubt, to the artist; his joy, however, comes only from seeing the picture grow under his brush, from feeling that he is bringing something new into the world. It is this joy which, in some form or other, man always seeks."

Man always seeks joy, and he can find it when skidding logs as easily as when painting a picture, and the effort in one case is as noble as in the other. Joy is always evanescent, but I clung to my moment as long as I could.

The poise of my soul is starry high,
And wild words rush to my lips
As the thought of the world goes racing by
Like sunshine after eclipse.

And then, and then I had to come back to the earth and tackle another log. But what does it matter? All things are in the day's work just the same, whether it be heaving on a handspike or doing paragraphs that are wickedly designed—to parody Shelley:

"To pump up oaths from financiers, and grind
The gentle spirits of our meek reviews."

In the everyday world where we drudge joylessly most of the time everything seems to be at sixes and sevens, and we could hardly endure it were it not for the moments when something jars us out of ourselves into accord with the great purpose of all things. And I firmly believe that every being that draws the breath of life has such moments, though he may not know how to give them expression. It is in such moments that we feel that all men are free and equal. The joy of the ditcher who accomplishes his task supremely well is the same as that of the millionaire who puts through a successful deal, or of the artist or poet. It is nonsense to say that all the poetry of the world has been written. Every moment of joy is a living poem, and such moments come to all of us somehow, some time.

March 7.—When the quail came right up to the door I might have known that something good was going to happen. It was during the cold spell—the lion spell—in the beginning of March. Everything was buried under snow and at seven o'clock in the morning the thermometer had touched ten degrees below zero. I was doing the chores at the stable when I heard the quail whistling in the orchard and fully intended going to have a look at them, to see how they were wintering. I had not set out feed for them for, alas, there are enough weeds on the place and in the neighbourhood to feed them fat. But to resume. When I had finished the chores and was starting towards the house I struck the tracks of the quail, looking like a picture of loosely strung barbed wire on the snow. To my surprise I found that they were headed straight for the house. In growing amazement I followed them until they passed around the corner of the house and then I saw the marks of their wings on the snow where they had taken flight, within ten feet of the front door. I felt really disappointed when I found that they had paid me a visit and I had not been at home. I do not know of many from whom I would have so thoroughly enjoyed a little call. No one in the house had noticed them, but judging from the excitement of Sheppy, the dog, he must have seen them and perhaps had something to do with their flight. He kept running about nosing their tracks and barking. It made me feel that I am being accepted in the country, now that the quail are so friendly. They are very careful about their neighbours and it is not every one they are willing to chum with.

On the very next morning after the visit of the quail spring came. The temperature rose fifty degrees in a few hours, a warm wind drove from the south, and almost before we could realise what was happening the snow was a memory. The crows had taken possession of the woods and the sky and were talking crow politics till you couldn't hear yourself think. A couple of song sparrows fluttered around the orchard, but it was too early for them to begin singing. The first thing we knew winter was under foot, beaten to earth by the wind and the sun. Only in the frost under the soft mud was there any trace of it. Then some one said: "I'll bet the sap is running to-day." After a conference in which the prospects of this kind of weather lasting were fully discussed we got the brace and bit and the spiles and began to rinse the sap-buckets. Then we went to the woods and started to tap in earnest. Before the bit could be withdrawn from the first hole the sap was already trickling down the bark. There was no doubt of it! Sap was running! With the help of a little boy who was just tall enough to reach up and hang the buckets on the spiles we went at the work with a will and soon the "tink-tunk" of the falling drops could be heard in every direction. The grave little helper picked what he called "a big fat tree" for his very own so that he can have plenty of hot syrup and taffy. As we are making maple syrup strictly for our own use we tapped only fifty trees. Wood is so scarce that it makes maple syrup an expensive luxury and the current price would not pay for the fuel used, not to mention the labour and the investment in buckets and the boiling kettle. But, at the present writing, as they say on the editorial page, we have twenty pails of sap gathered, and bright and early to-morrow we are going to boil in. The sap was gathered in the twilight with a new moon, a little moon, shedding its blessing on us, and to-night it is freezing a little. It is perfect sugar-weather!

I simply will not write spring poetry! Nature may tempt me as much as she likes, but I will not yield! Never before did I have so much trouble keeping from this world-worn form of folly. It is simply hissing at the safety valve, but I am keeping a firm grip on myself. The flicker of the sunshine on the roofs and fences, the far blue of the sky, the twittering of the birds, the cackling of the hens, the bawling of the cattle, the barking of the dogs, and the echoes that make the woods alive, all conspire to start my thoughts jigging and my words tinkling in rhyme. But I will not give in! I know, I feel that the world is flooded with the life impulse, with the "elan vital" of Bergson, but I have set my teeth and refuse to give in. The big, wise, absurd world laughs at spring poets and what I am enjoying these days is too good to be laughed at. I know that the life stirring in the innumerable roots of the grass and the myriad seeds and the swelling buds is the same life that is flushing me with joy, but I shall be silent at any cost. These favourites of Nature will expand in beauty and be living poems and no one will laugh at them. As I reach out and touch them with my finger tips I seem to feel the fire of life in them and my pulses beat to a new rhyme. And oh, it would be so easy to relieve my soul with a little lyric. A catchy refrain begins to beat in my head:

Sing! you freak of misery!—
If you can't sing, crow!!

No, I will not crow either! The world is full of people who are enjoying this spring glamour as much as I am and they are keeping quiet about it. I wonder if poetry should be written at all. Perhaps it should be lived and enjoyed. Who knows but the poet is simply a leaky vessel spilling out in words the lyrical fire that was meant to warm his heart and keep his pulses attune for the struggle of life. I seem to remember that Walt Whitman asserted somewhere that he had in himself all poems and all books. Who knows but that is true of all of us? And the wise people keep the poetry of life for their own use, knowing that all men have the same poetry in their souls if they will only relax themselves enough to enjoy it. In those beautiful spring days I feel sure that all my fellows of the world are moved with the same poetic urge that is thrilling me with its beauty. Why should I bother them with attempts to put in words what they already have in their hearts?

March 8.—With fuel so dear and maple syrup so cheap sugar-making is about the most peculiar job a man can get at. The harder you work the more money you lose. It involves the whole problem of the producer and consumer, and if you try to think it out you are likely to get as fatally twisted as the man who was kicked down a spiral staircase. I didn't try to think it out, but as I have a sweet tooth and all the members of the family have sweet teeth I decided to make sugar—in moderation. Fifty trees are not likely to give enough sap to make more syrup than one family will need in a year and the work of boiling in will not be too hard for one leisurely man. Besides, the dead limbs that have fallen from the trees in the past year will furnish enough fuel. Taking sugar-making in this way it resolves itself into a kind of holiday in the woods and I am strong on holidays. My favourite saint is St. Kavin for

"His calendar unrolled
With new feast days every year."

When a barrelful of sap had been gathered I took the new boiling pan to the woods and prepared to enjoy myself. Now, don't interrupt to tell me that I should have an up-to-date evaporator and all that sort of thing. I know it would make the work easier and more scientific, but the initial cost would be too great. A sheet-iron pan made by the tinsmith is more within my range, and if it leaks at every rivet-hole to begin with, that is my affair. I can cure that by using furnace cement and by boiling some oatmeal in the pan before beginning with the sap. I also know that I should have an arch instead of a trench cut through a cradle-knoll for the fire, for I have read all the advertisements of the best appliances for making maple sugar, but a man must cut his coat according to his cloth, and even if my temper had "Fourteen rattles and a button on it" before I got that sieve of a pan working right I am not going to tell about it. No one heard the remarks I made except the birds and I shall take a chance on a bird of the air reporting the matter.

When I finally got the pan caulked and the sap boiling briskly the world began to look brighter. Practically all the birds had come back over night. Killdeers and meadow-larks were calling, song-sparrows and horned larks were singing, bluebirds were flashing past and shedding music, and the crows, blackbirds, jays, and robins were gossiping everywhere. A south wind was blowing just enough to make a good draught under the pan and the sun was looking down on everything "Fur's I cud look or listen" and finding it good. Now, most people, when their work is going right and they are feeling happy, begin to whistle. I do not. Trained musicians have told me in confidence that my whistling sounds "like a hog in a high wind" and I have long since given up the practice—by request. My favourite relaxation is to let a few lines of poetry begin drumming in my head. I let that inward voice which puts all our thoughts in shape for us sing or chant the poetry for me over and over until I have tasted all its sweetness. On the particular day I have in mind the poem that thrust itself on me was one of Poe's:

"In the fairest of our valleys,
By good angels tenanted—"

But try as I would I could not recall the next two lines of the stanza. After repeating these two lines indefinitely, while my eyes and ears were taking in all that was going on about me in nature, I skipped to the next stanza which I could remember:

"Banners yellow, glorious, golden,
From its roof did float and flow—
But this, all this, was in the olden
Time long ago."

But Poe is not the poet for the open air and the woods. His gloomy imaginings began to overshadow the day:

"Dropping from out their condor wings
Invisible woe."

As quickly as possible I shook off the spell of his haunting word magic. There have been times when I have given myself up to his morbid brooding, for like Vance Thompson I have

"Walked in Broadway, to and fro,
With the sombre ghost of Edgar Poe."

But he did not belong in the open sunshine. I had to seek another companion.

In the intervals of gathering brush for the fire and pouring sap into the steaming pan—which still leaked here and there, drat it!—I began to hunt for a poet companion to help me pass the time—not to improve the time, mark you, but to make it pass pleasantly. Naturally I thought of Shakespeare for he is supposed to fit everywhere, but I guess the wrong quotations came to me. Every quotation had a moral tagged to it—sermons in stones, books in the running brooks, etc. Under a roof Shakespeare can be uproariously humorous, wise, witty, sublime, but in the open air he seems to moralise everything "into a thousand similes," to be constantly gathering "honey from the weed" and making "a moral of the devil himself." I would have none of him. Whitman proved equally difficult. I could not attend to my work and at the same time "loaf and invite my soul." Neither could I chum with him in his more cosmical moods. To do that I would have to spurn the earth away with my toe and look at things from "the outer dark."

"I see a great round wonder rolling through space,
I see the shaded part on one side where the sleepers are sleeping,
and the sunlit part on the other side."

But what would happen to the boiling syrup while I was taking such flights? It would be scorched and burned beyond a doubt. Moreover, I like to keep my feet on the earth—in good Canadian mud—even when indulging the wildest flights of imagination. I would have none of Whitman, even if he is the poet of outdoors. So one by one I tested many poets and rejected them all. They demanded too much.

After all, do the poets amount to so very much? Out in the woods I do not feel that they do. At their best they merely give us a point of view and a mood so that we can see and feel things as they did. But we all have moods and points of view of our own. Why shouldn't we use our own? You will soon find that every point of view overlooks as wonderful a world as any other. And you will find that your own moods attract the thoughts that belong to them as a magnet attracts steel filings. What if they are not the thoughts that you have seen in books? They are better, for they are your own. And that reminds me that we are inclined to make too much of books and even of thoughts. Books are all right to hold facts until we need them, just as a tool-chest holds tools. And thoughts are dangerous, whether they be our own or the thoughts of others, unless we keep them under control. Do you not remember Shelley's picture of one who

"Fled astray
With feeble steps o'er the world's wilderness,
And his own thoughts, along that rugged way,
Pursued, like raging hounds, their father and their prey."

On this perfect afternoon I did not want to be harried by thoughts, by my own or those of other men. I wanted to let the great sunshine and the earth smells, the sounds of wind and wing, and the homely farm and woodland sights—spreading about me as far as the horizon—seep into my soul through my senses, so that on some future day of storms and sorrow I could recall it entire and regain something of its peace. Is it not wonderful how in this way the things of the material world are constantly entering our minds through our senses, while the things of the inner and immaterial world are constantly passing out into the material world through our words and actions? Our observations and our thoughts are forever being woven into a wonderful tapestry of life and we are a part of the pattern. As I realise that I seem to see the spirit that answered:

"Beside the roaring loom of Time I ply
And weave for God the garment that thou seest him by."

And so the afternoon passed, with the poets and without them, with thoughts and without them, until the sun went down in gold and amber and my work was done. With the urge of spring in my heart and a strange music in my brain I bore home my spoils, feeling that the day had not been wasted.

Poets, O Poets! You have had your will!
My soul is ever vibrant to your song,
And in the glamour of your dreams I live.

Sages, O Sages! I have drunk my fill
At all the fountains that to Truth belong,
Thirsting for all you give—and cannot give.

Idly, slow-wafted by a magic sail,
I drift away in tranced ecstasy,
Sole to myself, to Life no more a thrall!

But in those hours supreme you ever fail!
You have no music for a soul made free,
No words for one who is at one with all!
Only a child, unconscious of all art,
Could show, unknowing, what is in my heart.

March 11.—"Now what on earth kind of mess are you making?"

Wasn't that a cheering remark to fling at a man who was having his crowded hour! When it startled and irritated me, I was busy being a pioneer of science, a prose poet, and the patient head of a family, all at the same time. Some people have their crowded hour of glorious life. That is the kind that poets sing about. Mine, as you will notice, was a crowded hour of simple life, and what it was worth will be set down hereinafter with humble truthfulness.

"Do you think that other people have nothing to do but wash saucepans for you to muss up? What do you think you are doing, anyway?"

The phrases of prose-poetry evaporated. The importance of the scientific discovery dwindled, and the dignified attitude necessary to the head of a family was seriously threatened.

"I'm just trying an experiment," I replied in guarded tones that covered a volcano of peevishness. My crowded hour had come during the sugar weather. There had been a cold snap that froze the sap in the buckets and hung icicles from the spiles. I had wandered disconsolately through the bush to investigate the frosty situation, when suddenly I remembered a treat that had been the delight of my youth. Unhooking a bucket, I tilted it over, until the ice-cake loosened, and then a spoonful of clear, thick syrup slipped over the rim into my waiting lips. M-m-mmm, but it did taste good, and right there the idea occurred to me that caused all the trouble.

It was evident that the real sweetness of maple sap did not freeze at the same temperature as water. Now, the whole process of sugar-making consists of removing the water from the sap. This is done by ordinary, prosaic people by boiling it down until all the water has evaporated. Not good enough for me. I would do something unique, characteristic of the north, Canadian, wonderful! (You will notice that the prose-poetry began with the inception of the idea.) If the first freezing removed so much of the water, why couldn't it all be removed by successive freezings—purified in the alembics of frost—perfected in Nature's wind-swept laboratory. Sounds good to me. Here goes:

With me, like Richard, to think is to act. Taking a pail, I went from tree to tree, unhooked bucket after bucket, and secured a grudging spoonful from each. The temperature was ten degrees below freezing, a north wind was blowing as if it had a search warrant, snow was drifting, and long before I had visited all of the hundred trees we had tapped, my fingers were numb. But what of that? Would it not be something to make the Canadian climate perfect the most delicious of all Canadian products? Not even the realms of poetry could furnish anything to equal it. Keats' "Syrops tinct with cinnamon" would be insipid by comparison, and Shakespeare's "Poppies and mandragora, and all the drowsy syrops of the world" but a high-sounding phrase. Cheered by such thoughts as these I kept on, in the words of Katherine Hale:

"With snow upon my shoulders,
And courage almost run"

—and also with chattering teeth. An hour of frostbitten industry yielded about a quart of crude syrup, and without waiting to remove my ear-muffs, I raided the kitchen for saucepans. I was simply bubbling over with quotations of poetry, scientific enthusiasm, and phrases in the process of coining. And it was while in this tumultuous mood I was interrupted with the question recorded above. Was ever a man so interrupted?

"What kind of an experiment are you trying?" persisted the unsympathetic inquisitor.

"I am going to make maple syrup by a new process. I shall refine it by cold, instead of heat."

"What good will that do?"

"What good, woman? What good did it do Peary to go to the North Pole? I'll bet Mrs. Galvani stood around and asked just such fool questions when Galvani was making frogs' legs twitch with electricity. What good did that do! huh! It opened the way for all the modern developments of electricity. If it hadn't been for Galvani making frogs' legs twitch, we wouldn't have any Hydro-Electric Power scheme and you wouldn't be able to gossip with your neighbours over the telephone. Just you wait till I have pipe lines carrying the sap from every sugar bush to the Arctic regions, and am refining maple syrup for the whole world by the zero process. You won't ask me then, 'What's the use?' No, indeed! You will just stand 'round wearing diamonds and remarking that you don't see anything very wonderful about it all. Any one might have thought of it. It only happened that I thought of it first."

It will be a draught for Juno when she banquets. It will be a liqueur to be quaffed at the close of the feast from long-stemmed glasses of Venetian artistry. In each there shall be a flake of gold-leaf, beaten from the precious ores of Yukon or Larder Lake. This shall make it give its colour aright, and those who quaff——

"Well, of all the fool notions——" commented another observer.

It was thus, no doubt, that the people of Syracuse joshed Archimedes when he was fussing with the first lever, and making fool remarks about how he could move the world. Yet see what the lever has done for humanity. One after another the grown-ups about the place investigated what was going on, sniffed superior, and went in to warm themselves by the kitchen fire.

Surely this would be the opportunity of a lifetime. A description of frost-refined syrup could be made as eloquent as Ingersoll on whiskey, or Voorhees on the dog. Br-r-r—but it's cold! As the ice formed in the saucepans the thickening syrup was drained off with tender care, but not until the children came from school did I receive any sympathy. As they had no preconceived notions, it seemed quite logical and wonderful to them that syrup should be refined in this way. They forgot their cold fingers and toes in the kindling of their imaginations.

"We'll get a refrigerator to make our syrup with, won't we, father? That'll be better than an evaporator, won't it?"

"Certainly."

When in need of sympathy, go to the young! They are the only ones whose eyes can see the promised land. Moses was right in his dealings with the Israelites. He led them around through the wilderness until the older generation had died off. The older generation has been made up of doubters and knockers since the beginning of time. They all come from Missouri.

By this time it was so cold that the muse went on strike. For the last time the syrup was drained off from the ice, and with the children at my heels, I went into the house to enjoy my triumph. Since the truth must be told, this was a time when those who sat in the seats of the scornful were right. My frost-refined syrup was a sickishly sweet, colourless fluid of no distinction. In all probability it was not true maple syrup at all, but what the scientists call maple honey, a substance derived from maple sap, and which will not crystallise. Still, the Crowded Hour was not in vain. It enabled me to learn at first hand just what the pioneers of progress must have suffered when perfecting their inventions. It was a mere detail that my invention was no good.

March 15.—It is a great day, an expansive day, a large day. The first thing that impressed me about it was its size. I know it is not customary to describe a day in terms of space, but there seems to be no way out of it. This is not a day of the kind that can be enjoyed in a house, or a field, or even within the rim of the horizon. It reaches up to the great neighbourly sun, and spreads as wide as the imagination. It is a day that overwhelms me, but, on thinking it over, I have found the key to its mystery. When I got up this morning it was the sun that first fixed my attention. It came bustling over the horizon with the air of one about to start spring house-cleaning. It awakened the south wind, plucked the myriad icy fingers from the little rivulets and flooded the world with light and warmth. But it is hardly exact to speak of the sun as house-cleaning. It is really building a new home and using only the foundations and framework of the old. It is upholstering the hills, decorating the woods, and refurnishing the fields. In a few days it will recarpet the earth and tack down the green breadths with brass-headed dandelions. When that work is done we can get down to a consideration of the buds and flowers and birds and the exquisite little things of spring. To-day the invitation is to have an outing with the universe. Only the sun and his work are worth considering.

On a day like this it is hard to believe that the sun is ninety million miles away. Why, it is just up there in the sky, and is busy at our feet and all around us. I do not thank the astronomers for teaching me that it is so distant. I would much rather have the point of view of the Prince of Morocco, who protested:

"Mislike me not for my complexion,
The shadow'd livery of the burnish'd sun,
To whom I am a neighbour and near bred."

All through the winter the sun may have been as far away as learned men say, but to-day it is visiting with us. It is at work in the back yard and in the front yard and in the fields and woods. It is making the warm wind blow and the sweet sap flow, and making us all so happy that we drop into rhyme without noticing. But one cannot do justice to such a day as this even while sitting on a log in the sugar-bush and writing in the intervals of firing-up under the pan. To enjoy and describe it aright he should be able, in imagination, to sit on a mountain with his feet in a pleasant valley and his head aureoled with smoky haze. He should be conscious only of the kindly sun and of its footstool, the earth. His singing robes should be woven of golden sunshine, and—and—I guess I had better leave that sort of thing to the poets and put a few more sticks under the pan.

March 21.—Yesterday we began to cut the big maple into stove wood. The work was undertaken in a leisurely and proper way, and not with a view of piling up a record. This made it possible to take an interest in the tree as well as in the work, and there was much to repay observation. The tree stood over thirty inches on the stump, and, according to the rings of growth, must have been over one hundred and thirty years old; but the crosscut saw was in good condition, and as no one was in a hurry the work was not killing enough to be amusing. The butt of the tree was hollow and partly filled with the kind of rotten wood or punk that, I am told, was once used for tinder in the days of flint and steel.

After a couple of cuts had been dropped off, the hollow gave place to punk that was honeycombed with wormholes. The next cut brought to view a colony of winged ants, and in my ignorance of entomology I supposed that they were responsible for the catacombs in which they lived. They were all torpid when brought to light by the splitting of the block, but they soon came to life in the sunshine and began crawling about. The next cut explained the mystery of the tunnels in which the ants lived, for it revealed a colony of boring worms. They had evidently done the carpentering for the ants, who had merely cleared up after them and taken possession, from which it appears that "Old Grub, time out o' mind the fairies' coachmaker," is also the house-builder for the winged ants. The next cut carried us beyond the grubs into solid wood that was as sound as a bone. As the trunk at this point was still two feet in thickness, and was as straight as a lead pencil for over fifty feet, a council was held, and it was decided that, with good maple flooring at present prices, it would be a shame to devote such a tree to stove wood. After arriving at this decision we went to the top and resumed work. We started to saw just below the hole into which I had so often seen the black squirrels disappear. The cut revealed a hollow of about a foot in diameter and four feet in length that was worthy of a special study in itself. In the bottom there was about two feet of rich brown mould that had evidently been formed by the rotting of leaves that had been carried in for squirrel nests for many years. There was a nest of dry leaves that had evidently been in use during the past winter, and, as the entrance was so small, all the leaves that had gone to making the deposit of mould must have been carried in by the squirrels, who had probably been occupying this retreat for fifty years or more. What interested me most was the cleanness of the walls of the upper part of the hollow. I was assured that this could only have been done by bees that had occupied it at one time. The fact that there was no old comb or any other trace of these inhabitants was explained by the fondness of mice for wax. It is said that when a colony of bees dies out the mice very quickly clear away every trace of honey and comb. It was certainly an ideal hive for wild bees, and the only wonder is that some of the swarms that escaped last summer did not make a home in it.

The breaking-up of the mould brought to light a number of unexpected inhabitants in the shape of ordinary white grubs and wire-worms. They were likewise torpid, and waiting in cold storage for the return of spring. I also found some blue-bottle flies and a couple of very active black spiders that had evidently been living over fifty feet above the ground. Altogether, with its squirrels, ants, grubs, bugs, flies, and spiders, the big maple had been something of a world in itself.

While I was looking at the splendid trunk and wondering mildly whether it would be used to floor the chancel of a church or a profane dancing-hall, I suddenly recalled a delightful fable in blank verse that was written about fifteen years ago by Mr. John Lewis of The Star. It was never published, and I have lost my copy, but, fortunately, I can remember enough of it to show what a gem it was. He fabled, in good, workman-like verse, of a reporter who had been assigned to report many banquets until he loathed after-dinner speeches from the depth of his soul. At last, in desperation, he prayed that the gods would change him into a tree and place him in a forest, far from the haunts of men. The gods were kind and changed him into "a tree—a large deciduous tree." The transformed reporter, in his new-found happiness,

"Stretched his limbs
And yawned away the weariness of years—
And cast a generous shade."

But the period of contentment did not last long. A lumber-man who was at work in the woods saw the big tree and, calling his workmen, they cut it down, hauled it to a sawmill, and ripped it into planks. Then it was seasoned and made into a great table that was placed in a banqueting hall, and the poor reporter

"Knew the bitter of the answered prayer."

Speaking of banquets, I happened to look towards the butt of the tree and found that two spotted woodpeckers and a couple of sapsuckers were having the feast of their lives on the ants and grubs that had been routed out of their homes by our work. They were so busy and hungry that they let me approach to within a few yards of them without flying away. As I remember it, the chickadees used to be the first to a feast of this kind, but there was none in sight. As a matter of fact, I have not seen a chickadee this year, though they are not migrating birds. I am afraid that the woods are no longer dense enough for these busy, impudent little fellows. Other birds are quite plentiful, however. Every dead limb that can serve as a sounding-board now has its bachelor or widower woodpecker or highholder rattling out his love call until you would think that a sky-scraper was in course of erection in the woodlot, with the pneumatic riveters hard at work. At least two flocks of quail have wintered safely on this farm, and they must be mating now, for every morning they can be heard whistling "Bob White" from every point of the compass. Unless we have a wet summer, the place should be overrun with them next fall. The blue jays are not squawking as much as they were during the winter, so it is probable that they are also nesting, but the blackbirds and crows are still in flocks. A couple of weeks ago the nest of a horned lark with four eggs in it was found in the snow, but it was apparently deserted owing to the unusually cold weather.

This morning the hawks were circling over the old nest, and I am afraid that I shall once more have the unpleasant task of breaking up their housekeeping. For three years I have shot up their nest during the breeding season, but still they will not desert the old homestead. They must have been there for years, for the nest is now a huge pile of sticks about four feet in diameter, in the top of the tallest and most slippery beech tree within miles. As the owner does not live on the farm and has no young chickens to be destroyed, he does not want a valuable tree cut down, and the nest is so high that no one thinks of climbing to it and pulling it down.

[APRIL]

April 2.—Spring seems to be approaching this year in much the same way as the snail in the old school problem climbed to the top of the pole. He used to climb up two inches in the daytime and slip back one at night. Every approach of spring is followed by an immediate relapse, and on several occasions it seemed to advance only one inch in the daytime and then to slip back six inches at night. But it is certainly coming. Every time the sap begins running again it runs a little faster, and last Sunday it gushed out at a rate that was both wasteful and wicked. I have just heard of one good man who was so impressed by the waste that he sat up until twelve o'clock on Sunday night, and immediately after the clock struck he went out to the sugar-bush and gathered the sap by the light of a lantern. I can't help wondering if he was not really breaking the Sabbath in knowing anything about the condition of his sap-buckets, and especially in having his mind on the subject during the hours of waiting. It is a delicate point, and one on which we should have an authoritative ruling. But spring is really coming, and the imagination kindles at the thought. It is really no wonder that every one with a touch of poetry "rages on swift iambics" in the spring. After the season of dreariness and death the hosts of light and life come back to reconquer the earth. Marshalled and led by their great general, the sun, the birds come back with the south winds. The flowers, and every green herb, rouse and push through the warm soil; the leaves expand in the genial glow, and presently the world is all alive again. In a short time we get accustomed to the reign of life, and poetry languishes during the heat of summer. But while the change is taking place the soul of man expands, and his thoughts begin to pulse in accord with the great rhythms of the universe. In such a state of exaltation poetry becomes as natural as breathing.

Of course the birds are back, and it is impossible to disregard them entirely. The boys shout the news to me whenever they see a returned traveller—bluebirds, killdeers, robins, meadow-larks: in short, "all the migrant hosts of June." But they need no announcer. Their songs and cries make their presence known. The song-sparrows are singing with a persistence that suggests that they have selected their summer homes and are satisfied. A few minutes ago a horned lark rested for a moment on a fence post and warbled in a hurried, excited way that suggested a brief respite from the cares of housekeeping. As their nests are frequently found when there is snow on the ground, his mate is probably brooding somewhere in the neighbourhood. Lucky birds! They have no "ne temere" decree to bother them, and the way they go over line fences shows that they have no idea of property rights. But, as I said, the birds are not the dominating attraction of the day. My mind constantly goes back to the sun and its boundless activity. If I were a painter I should want to paint the sunshine when it seems to be so alive as it is this morning. It is brushing away the snow, making the elm buds misty, sending countless rivulets whispering and lisping through the grass, and filling every nook and cranny with its flood of life. The sunshine we are having seems to be piled on the earth as high as the sun itself. The air is steeped in it, and wherever we turn we can see its "banners yellow, glorious, golden." Everything we look at reflects back the sunshine. The very songs of the birds seem to come to us freighted with sunshine—sunshine everywhere and over everything. Even the houses and barns across the fields look as if they had been awakened by it, and are cheery and cosy and hospitable. It is certainly a great day.

And it seems to be a day for big ideas. While gathering sap, I sampled some of the buckets and noticed that some trees give much sweeter sap than others. Now, why shouldn't the Department of Forestry look into the matter of maple sugar production in a scientific way? The trees that give the sweetest sap must be of a better strain than the others, and by adopting selective methods, why should it not be possible to develop sugar maples just as they are developing new brands of wheat? By taking seeds from the best trees and planting them, in about sixty years we should have another generation of trees ready to tap. We could then discover, or rather our descendants could, which of these inherited the strongest sugar-producing qualities, and seeds could be gathered from them for a new planting. By keeping up the work for a thousand years or so trees might be developed that would produce "real, old-fashioned" maple syrup direct from the spile without all this troublesome work of "boiling-in." Somehow on a day like this such an idea does not seem half so absurd as it will probably look in type. Canada is a young nation, with all the future before it. We are now laying the foundations of all the great things that are to be, so why should not something be done to develop the maple sugar industry? I wish I had thought of this sooner, so that I might have suggested it to the sugar-maker of the Donlands with a view to having the matter properly considered by Parliament. But the idea will keep. In an experiment that is to extend over a thousand years or so a year or two at the beginning will not matter much.

Does not the college song say, "The best of friends must part, must part?" After I had been chumming with my neighbour, the sun, for a few glorious hours its work carried it elsewhere and it moved westward, "trailing clouds of glory" as it moved. My helpers had long since gone to hunt for sandwiches—and had failed to return. Even the little boy whose part in sugar-making was purely decorative, making mudpies with snow frosting, had lost interest in his work and had gone home. I was left alone with the kettle and the ravenous fire under it—and with a spring appetite. About the time when the sun was touching the horizon and the frost was coming back to undo its work in puny spitefulness I went home to supper, leaving a good fire blazing and the kettle boiling. After that came a session under the stars and the full moon, and then another trip across the fields, carrying a twelve-quart pail of syrup. Tired? Well, yes, but I had an outing in that wonderful sunshine. Besides, I have a pailful of the sunshine to use with future pancakes. Sugar-making has compensations.

April 5.—Have you ever watched a small boy trying to make a broad jump? He will go back and back, so as to get a good start, and when at last he tries he has to run so far before he reaches the mark that he is out of breath and can't jump. Well, that is exactly the fix I am in this morning. There is something I want to talk about, and I want to do it without appearing to be teaching a lesson or drawing a moral or preaching a lay sermon. I have gone so far back in my attempt to get a good start that for the past half hour I have been grumbling against Shakespeare for having made the Duke say that he could find

"Tongues in trees, books in the running brooks,
Sermons in stones and good in everything."