The other day we were riding past a large farm, and were much
gratified at a device of the owner for the preservation of his tools.
A good plow, apparently new in the spring, had been left in one corner
of the field, standing in the furrow, just where, four months before,
the boy had finished his _stint_. Probably the timber needed
_seasoning_—it was certainly getting it. Perhaps it was left out for
acclimation. May-be the farmer left it there to save time in the hurry
of the spring-work, in dragging it from the shed. Perhaps he covered
the share to keep it from the elements, and save it from rusting. Or,
again, perhaps he is troubled with neighbors that _borrow_, and had
left it where it would be convenient for them. He might, at least,
have built a little shed over it. Can any one tell what a farmer
leaves a plow out a whole season for? It is barely possible that he
was an _Irishman_, and had _planted_ for a spring crop of plows.
After we got to sleep that night, we dreamed a dream. We went into
that man’s barn; boards were kicked off, partitions were half broken
down, racks broken, floor a foot deep with manure, hay trampled under
foot and wasted, grain squandered. The wagon had not been hauled under
the shed, though it was raining. The harness was scattered about—hames
in one place, the breeching in another—the lines were used for
_halters_. We went to the house. A shed stood hard by, in which a
family wagon was kept for wife and daughters to go to town in. The
hens had appropriated it as a roost, and however plain it was _once_,
it was ornamented _now_, inside and out. (Here, by the way, let it be
remembered that hen-dung is the _best_ manure for melons, squashes,
cucumbers, etc.) We peeped into the smoke-house, but of all the
“fixings” that we ever saw! A Chinese Museum is nothing to it. Onions,
soap-grease, squashes, hogs’ bristles, soap, old iron, kettles, a
broken spinning-wheel, a churn, a grindstone, bacon, hams, washing
tubs, a barrel of salt, bones with the meat half cut off, scraps of
leather, dirty bags, a chest of Indian meal, old boots, smoked
sausages, the ashes and brands that remained since the last “smoke,”
stumps of brooms, half a barrel of rotten apples, together with rats,
bacon bugs, earwigs, sowbugs, and other vermin which collect in damp
dirt. We started for the house; the window near the door had twelve
lights, two of wood, two of hats, four of paper, one of a bunch of
rags, one of a pillow, and the _rest_ of glass. Under it stood several
cooking pots, and several that were _not_ for cooking. As we were
meditating whether to enter, such a squall arose from a quarrelling
man and woman, that we awoke—and lo! it was a dream. So that the man
who left his plow out all the season, may live in the neatest house in
the county, for all that we know; only, was it not strange that we
should have dreamed all this from just seeing a plow left out in the
furrow.