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."