"My lads," quoth the father, "come forth to the garden, and merrily
work in the glow of the sun; to loiter about is a crime beyond pardon,
when there's so much hoeing that has to be done! It pains me to mark
that you'd fain be retreating away from the hoes and such weapons as
these; you're diligent, though, when the time comes for eating the
turnips and lettuce and cabbage and peas."
"Alas," sigh the boys, "that our father must work us like galley
slaves, thus, at the hoe and the spade! More fortunate lads all have
gone to the circus, they revel in peanuts and pink lemonade! Oh, what
is the profit of pruning and trimming, and sowing the radish, and
planting the yam, when everyone knows there is excellent swimming two
miles up the creek at the foot of the dam?
"Sail in!" cries the parent, "the daytime is speeding, the night will
be here in the space of three shakes! Oh, this is the season for
digging and seeding, for doing great deeds with the long-handled rakes!
Consider the maxims of Franklin, the printer, the rede of the prophets,
of poets who sing; in comfort they live through the stress of the
winter, who toil like the ants or the bees in the spring!"
"For maxims and proverbs it's little we're wishing," the boys mutter
low, as they wearily delve; "the neighbor boy says there is elegant
fishing--he went after catfish and came home with twelve. We have to
stay here doing labors that cramp us, while others are pulling out fish
by the pound! They're playing baseball every day on the campus, and
down in the grove there's a merry-go-round!"
Alack! If the parents could see with the vision of boys and if boys
used the eyes of their sires, then fun would be labor, with rapture
elysian, and toil would be play, to the music of lyres!