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magnificently shown; no labor will better test the thews and sinews of a man. same indescribable joy arises from the simultaneous steady movement that pulsates out from the heavy tread of marching men, and the symmetrical involutions of a hall of dancers. And there is rapid and continual progress. Abundant conditions of excitement are in the operations of a band of mowers. If strength, action, rhythm, simultaneity, and success, in concrete and vivid presentation, will not stir pulses of deep pleasure in a man's soul, he should be kicked out of decent society as an undoubted treasoner and incendiary, or sent to the School for the Training and Teaching of Idiots, as a pitiable instance of that anticlimax of mental negation whose two higher degrees are (see Dr. S. G. Howe's Reports) simpleton and foolas a fully undeveloped idiot.

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Away go the mowers, halfway round the field; and now they stand erect, and the ringing reduplicating clash of the whetstones comes back upon their steps. But I too must perform my office. With ardor I inquire, like the revolutionary orator, Why stand we here idle?" and with a "peaked stick" I descend in fury upon the slain. The red-top and daisies are tossed abroad upon the four winds; and with an ennobling consciousness of power, and working out certain dim conceptions of a grand military march, by brandishing my stick in unison with the alternation of advancing steps, I sweep up and down the field in a centrifugacious halo of scattered gramineæ, feeling, as nearly as I can judge, very much like a cyclone.

But over what tremendous volcanoes of thinly covered agonies and horrid throes of pain are all hollow human exultations enacted! In the midst of my stormful march, a frightful dart of Eblis, a sharp sudden stroke, precipitated as by diabolical propulsion from some far distant sphere of malignant wrath, smites me full upon the forehead. A shrieking diphthongal OU! and a lofty entrechat are the involuntary introductories of my debut as "Le danseur malgré lui." Several millions of minute yellow devils, with black stripes and a "voice and hideous hum," stimulate me into an inconceivably rapid and intricate war-dance, accompanied by a solo obligato upon the human voice. I have, in short, trodden upon a yellow hornets' nest. The Briarean evolutions of my hands knock off my hat. An enterprising "bird" forthwith ensconces himself among my locks, and proceeds to harpoon me at his leisure. I seem to scrub out every hair, such is the promptitude and velocity

of the friction which I apply. But I despair of maintaining my position, the enemy having made a lodgment within the citadel. I run as nobody ever ran before, and suddenly turn and flee at a sharp angle to my first course, in order that the momentum of my foes may throw them off my track. But they turn as quickly as I, sticking much closer than either a friend or a brother would do. I see the brook before me, I go headforemost, splash! into a deep hole, where I stumble, fall, choke, and am picked out by the mowers, who are nearly helpless with laughter. I have swallowed several quarts of warm brookwater, screeched until I cannot whisper, expended more strength and breath than it seems possible that I should ever recover; have endured and am enduring more pain than ten hydrophobiacs; and with one eye fast shut and swelled into a hard red lump of agony, and sundry abnormal organs" extemporizing cranial evidence of a most unsymmetrical character, I lie helpless, blind, sopping, and sobbing in a swath of fresh, cool, green grass, until time, salt, and plantain leaves assuage most of the pain. I know what hornets are, at least in their foreign relations; but the single item of knowledge is no equivalent for the difficulties under which it was pursued. What fiends they are! Did the Inquisition ever try hornets on any particularly refractory captive ?

Soon comes the dinner time, indicated to the observant farmers, by the proportions of shadow and sunlight, upon the roof of a certain barn. We made a nest in bushes and long grass, within the shadow of great trees, and squatted Turk-like around a service of tin crockery, brown paper and bark, whereon were displayed salt beef, cold boiled potatoes, bread and butter, and a specimen of rye gingerbread, which, for weight and tenacity, might be a mass of native copper, from Lake Superior. The food disappears rapidly, under the direction of jack-knives and one-pronged forks, whittled from sticks. The jug clucks and chuckles to the affectionate kisses of the thirsty workmen, and much refreshed, they take a short "nooning" to tell stories, gossip or sleep, and go to work again.

Haymakers cure in the afternoon what they kill in the morning. At two or three o'clock the mowing ceases, and the raking begins. In this operation, the weakest goes first, that the strongest man may take the heaviest raking; so I am ex officio leader. I must fall smartly to, to keep ahead, or my rear-rank man will

rake my heels off; and for a while I go bravely on. But the peculiar hold, and sliding manipulation of the " "rake's-tail" soon tell on my city-bred hands. The insides of my thumbs, and the space between them and my fingers, is first red and then raw; and by the time that the grass lies in winrows, I have done enough. Before sunset the winrows are rolled into cocks, which are shaped conewise, and skilfully shingle-laid for shedding of rain; and with a small load of new hay, hastily pitched upon the cart, for immediate use, we return home.

Close after sunset is milking; after milking, supper; after supper, prayers; and after prayers, sleep; which, indeed, had made an irruption from its legitimate domain, in the chambers above, and taken me at a disadvantage-when I was "down," on my knees, as in duty bound. The steady unmodulated evenness of my uncle's reading-for the family was Episcopalian-and the full melody of the words, put me quickly asleep; and I reluctantly rise, retire, and undress; reluctantly, because the motion charms away the drowsy god into whose embrace I sank so softly, and leaves me broad awake to lie down in bed. But I soon forget that and every other trouble, and know no more until daybreak.

THE SALT MEADOW.

SALT is good. Men like it, and beasts. To cattle, however, near the sea, is often given an allowance of "salt hay," instead of the pure condiment. Salt hay is of two principal sorts, called, where my information was obtained, "salt grass" and แ black-grass." There is also a sedge, which grows along the river-sides and in ditches and marshes; a coarse, swordshaped grass, used for thatching or litter. The salt-grass and black-grass, are fine short grasses, growing upon the level surfaces called "salt meadows." These are alluvial deposits of a strange unctuous marine mud, stretching along the coast in recesses, and up river valleys; a curious half vegetable earth, soft, black, slippery. A twenty-foot pole may be often thrust down into it without finding bottom. Indeed, it sometimes does a very fair business in the quicksand line. Somewhere under the surface of a very smooth-faced salt-meadow, a little east of New Haven, are the duplicate and triplicate of some furlongs of embankment, swallowed down by an unexpected abyss beneath, at the expense and to the chagrin of the New

Haven and New London Railroad Company.

The salt grass is of a bright yellowish green; a beautiful hue in healthy vegetation, although elsewhere peculiarly sickly-and the black-grass, as its name imports, of a very dark green. The stretches of meadow are like great patches of particolored velvet, so soft is the tone of color given by the fineness of the grass and the delicacy of its tints. Rocks, and patches of upland called islands by the farmers, stand out here and there, above the level line of the salt land, as distinctly as any sea-island from the water; and as into the sea, points and promontories of upland project into it.

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The salt haying is later than the upland haying, and in sundry details varies from it. The day in the salt meadow was an adventurous expedition to me; for we had to start early and return late, living several miles up the country. The scene of action, too, was strange and new; open to the sea on one side, swept by the salt breezes, looked in upon by the silent ships that all day long went trooping by, haunted by queer shore-birds and odd reptiles, covered and edged by grotesque plants; a whole new world to an up-country boy. My work was light, for the grass was thin and easy to spread; and I used to spend much of the day in the desultory wanderings that children love. I strolled among the sedge and sought muscles; poked sticks down by the "fiddlers' holes, and caught the odd occupant by his single claw, as he fled up from the supposed earthquake; chased the said fiddler -a small gray one-clawed crab, who scuttles and dodges about as jerkingly and nimbly as a fiddler's elbow, whence his name as he ran about the banks; raked out oysters from the river-bed close by, and learned the inhuman art of eating them raw; investigated the scabby patches of naked mud, which lie here and there among the grass; rheumy sore-looking places, plantless, crusted over with dry scales, as if a cutaneous disease had destroyed the life of the surface, from an excess, perhaps, of salt, causing humors in the ground, and exanthematous disorders. Or I watched the boatmen, who occasionally "dropped kellick" in the river channel, and plied the oyster-tongs. These are a ferocious hybrid between an iron-toothed rake and a pair of scissors; having the long handles, cross-head and teeth of the former, and the pivotal interduplication of the latter; so that at fifteen or twenty feet under water, the iron teeth bite between each other, like the fingers

of clasped hands, griping firmly whatever is between them. Or I rambled off to one of the tree-crowned "islands" afore mentioned-I always fancied that they were not standing still, but slowly gliding along the meadow, wandering off down to the sea-and explored their nooks and corners. The day waned pleasantly, under strange influences. A vague and dreamy feeling of exploratory desire pervaded the atmosphere. The level land, the level sea, the bright horizon afar over the water, the wide and open views, the dancing of the distance in the hot air, the silent motion of the winged ships, the sighing of the steady wind, as if it felt relief at gliding unbroken over the expanse; the notion of vastness and the dim suggestion of the distance, spoke to all the melancholy longings, and questioning, yearning thoughts that sleep in children's minds-but are too often murdered by ungenial training before they wake.

Then there were curious inventions of husbandry. The meadow is often too soft to bear the loaded cart. Sometimes the elastic greasy crust unexpectedly lets through the wheel, or the feet of the cattle. Then the lofty load careens, and slides off; the oxen kick and plunge while the meadow holds them fast by the heels, or sink to their bellies, and stand still until unyoked, and left to crawl unimpeded out. Sometimes all the chains in the meadow are hitched to the cart-tongue, leading to firm ground; and half-a-dozen teams united drag the distant load ashore. But if the danger of the muddy depths has been wisely foreseen, a "meadow sled " carries the burden safely over. This is a stout drag, consisting of two wide runners well framed together, and so made as to fit under the axle-tree without lifting the wheels from the ground. It is chained to its place, like a peddler's bull-dog; and on this additional bearing, the cart goes securely sliding about over smooth grass and slimy mud, almost as easily as over snow. If even that precaution is judged insufficient, the hay is "poled out." Two stout "hay poles 99 are thrust beneath the heap, and two men, one behind and one before, carrying it, as upon a sedan, to terra firma. This is sometimes a troublesome business. Mosquitoes are terrifically rife in some parts of the salt meadows. They will rise on one's track almost in a solid mass, and pursue with a wolfishly, bloodthirsty pertinacity, which is pretty sure to result in anger, slaps, and blood. This may not be absolutely unendurable, so long as the hands are free to slap; but when you have a heavy hay

cock squatting on the poles, of which you carry one end, you are pinned; and then, of the above mixture, slaps being unavailable, there remains only the anger and the blood; of which you monopolize the former, and the gentleman with the "little bill" the latter. There is another ugly insect, rarely seen, at least in Connecticut, except upon the salt meadows. It is an enormous black fly, half as large again as a "bull bumble-bee," and a great deal more troublesome. He is a bloody villain, and a truculent. He carries in his snout a machine compounded of a bradawl and a pump, with which he perforates and depletes his victims; and he sings bass. One of these rascals will make a horse or a yoke of oxen nearly crazy. They will bear tolerably well to be all speckled over with mosquitoes or greenheads," if they can't get rid of them; but this monster carries too many guns. They cannot stand so deliberate and extensive a stab as his; and unless he is forthwith dispatched or driven off, they may be expected to execute antics more energetic than useful.

THE WHITEFISHING.

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Such was a day in the salt meadows. But the pleasantest days of my farming, were days of fishing. The sea is an inexhaustible storehouse of fertilizers to the farmers of the coast. Rockweed, seaweed, mud, shells and whitefish, are carted up the country as far as eight or ten miles, and spread upon the land, or deposited in the barn-yard. Thus the bounty of the sea balances the sterility of the granite formation along the sound.

The whitefish is a herring-like fish, very bony and oily, which comes in the summer in shoals, called by the fishermen "schools," from unknown regions toward the ever mysterious East, out of the realms of the sea. They are caught by millions and sold by thousands; and are a st― smell, I mean, in the nostrils of those who flee by railroad from the stifling city to Sachem's Head, and to the other shoreward haunts of the "upper ten." But they make corn and potatoes grow nicely: and I found that after working a day or two among their unburied remains, I was not affected either mentally, by the ghastly appearance of the defunct, or physically, by their exhalations.

They come up into harbors and coves to feed, as is supposed-for I don't know that any body has actually seen them at it -and while they are at table, a long seine is dropped round them, and they are en

snared. But all this does not give the history of my day.

We rise in advance of the regular hours, for the "fish-house" is five miles away, and the day must needs be long. Well provisioned in stomach and basket, we set out before light, afoot. Our way lies for some distance along one side of a river valley, down a crooked straggling country road, dodging about through patches of woods, round hard-headed rocky ledges, and passing here and there a solitary house yet alone in the perfect stillness of early morning. The trampling steps and rustic voices of our party broke rudely forward into the yet unviolated silence of the night; which seemed to flee along wood and field, and always to be couching shyly before us, hoping to rest at last undisturbed. We came to a cross-road, at which our former path ended; but our veteran leader unfalteringly guided us across it, through a barn-yard opposite, around the cow-shed, down the lane, through a pair of bars under an apple-tree; and we entered upon one of the footpaths that mark up all country neighborhoods-sneaking about under mysterious shades and remote hill sides, or edging along by pasture fences, and disappearing under a log, or tapering off into a mouse track; but which lead the initiated to many a destination much to be desired for work or for sport. This one led us under an orchard of apple-trees all drenched in dew, through a mowing-lot or two, over a ridge thinly set with trees, and out upon the last swell of the sinking upland, where it sloped away into the wide open level of the salt meadows, and looked out upon the sea beyond, which gleamed out from under the morning mists (for by this time the sun looked out upon the landscape), and came brimming up in the fulness of the flood-tide to the limit of the low beach, as if meditating a good run and roll across the meadow. Now we could see the river again, all swollen and black with the regorged salt water, creeping half choked and crookedly about in the meadow, between two narrow edgings of sedge, as you may see a burly face within a slender rim of whisker. As we descended upon the salt alluvium, the plague of mosquitoes arose upon us. After every man, as after Fergus MacIvor Vich Ian Vohr, went a tail of devoted followers: and like his, ours proposed to make a living out of their leader. Content now dwelt in cowhide boots; much grumbling and some blood came from those whose ankles were yarndefended only; and an irregular fire of VOL. III.- -24

slaps did considerable execution among the foe, as they came piping and singing to the onset, like Milton's devils. Thus escorted, in the style of Bon Gaultier's Thairshon

"With four and twenty men,

And five and twenty pipers,"

we crossed the marsh to the stygian seeming river, crossed the river in a stygian seeming skiff, rickety and patched, which was dislodged from a cunning concealment in a sedgy ditch and "sculled" (not an inappropriate motive power for the skiff of the dead; undoubtedly Charon's method of propulsion) with one hand by our dextrous chief, and resumed our dreary and slippery walk on the other side. Now the fish-house loomed up on the neighboring beach, looking, on its solitary rocky perch, as large as a farm-house, but shrinking as we approached, until as we entered it, it became definitely about twelve feet square, and seven feet "between joints." It was fitted up with half a dozen bunks filled with salt hay for bedding, a table and chairs rather halt, a fire-place, a closet, an attic, a kettle, a fryingpan, sundry other cooking utensils, and an extensive assortment of antique and grotesque garments. Hats consisting of a large hole edged with a narrow rim, great rusty boots, trowsers such as if a young tornado had worn and torn them, and horrid red shirts, sat, stood, lay and hung, on floor, chairs, bedside or rafters, as though a troop of imps had been rioting up and down in them, and at the opening of the door by mortal men, had instantaneously jumped out and fled.

The provisions were stored in the closet, and the members of the " fish-gang" disguised themselves in piratical outfits from the aforesaid ready-made stock, leaving their decent clothes for their return home, and becoming, in their wild and ragged gear, entirely independent of moisture and of mud. Next, they hauled up the boat -a great clumsy, flat-bottomed, heavysterned scow, equipped with a capstan forward and a platform aft to carry the seine -and having beached her in front of the reel, proceeded to unreel and ship the seine, ready for setting. We boys armed ourselves with old hoes and tin pots, and marched off to dig long clams, with an eye to a stew at home, and to the inveigling of certain blackfish, sea-bass, and other of the Neptunian herds, understood to be lurking and wandering around the rocks in front of the fish-house, at proper times of tide. When the seine was all aboard, the fishermen sat down on the sand and

rocks, and one climbed the signal-pole, to look out for a "school" of fish.

The fish-house was on a point at the western end of a somewhat shallow bay, whose shore, a silver-sanded beach, ran curving round to the point on the other side. The fish, as before mentioned, always come from the eastward; working up into the shallows, skittering and skimming in sport along the surface, or fleeing in haste before the sharks or porpoises or other great fish who follow after them for their meals and the wide dark ripple of the whole shoal, the racing spatter of a frightened few, or the bay all dotted with the quietly emergent little black blackfins, or tails flourishing aloft preparatory to a dive after lunch, are the signs that betray his booty to the fisherman's eye. "I see a flag!" sings out an ardent youth. Flag is, metaphorically, tail, from its flaunting display by the ambitious owner. The experienced elders don't see it, probably because the young man saw it first; but immediately the great "school" with one consent deploys upon the smooth surface of the bay, and ten thousand back fins and tails dot the quiet water, which ripples and rustles with the glancing mass of life within its bosom. Hoes and tin pots are cast aside, as we rush to see the sport; for the fishermen have sprung for the boat, in excitement intense, but repressed for fear of alarming the timid fish. They launch their awkward craft, and softly pull away to seaward, amid smothered prophecies of from ten to a hundred and fifty thousand fish, and under the captaincy of steady old Uncle Jim Langdon, who stands in the stern-sheets to direct the rowers and to deliver over the net.

He guides the boat by ordering the oarsmen; not with the salt phrases of oceanic seamanships, but with the same words that rule old Buck and Bright, at his farmstead up by the East Woods.

Haw now, Bill, a little; haw I tell you; there, go 'long." Now he lifts off the wide net, as the "warp," left fastened to the capstan ashore, under the reel, drags it silently down into the water, and the lengthening line of floats, bobs and wavers upon the sea. "Haw a little; haw boat; pull now; pull! Con-found their darned picters," says Uncle Jim, in a sudden revulsion of wrath, for all the fish have suddenly sunk, and there is danger that they will disgracefully sneak out under the lower edge of the net while it hangs in deep water, and walk away each with his tongue in his cheek, leaving the fishermen only "fisherman's luck."

"There,

there they are ag'in," says the old man,

as the black points stick out once more:

"Go it. Come, pull ahead." And the heavy boat sweeps slowly round the fish, until the whole seine, eighty rods long, just a quarter of a mile, hangs in the sea around them.

"Unconscious of their fate, the little victims play,"

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and the fishermen beach the boat at the other side of the bay, carry the warp at that end to the further capstan, and prepare to haul. Now there is need of all hands and the cook;" for the sooner the warp can be wound in upon the capstans, the sooner the net will range up into shallow water, where the danger of losing fish under the lead-line will be over. Both capstans are manned, and boys and men shove round the bars on the "keen jump," until soon the staff at either end of the net comes riding up the beach. Now comes hard pulling; for the rest of the net must be drawn in by hand, and it holds many fish and much water, besides the drag of the corks on the surface and of the lead-line on the bottom. Slowly and steadily come the two ends of the net, hand over hand, piled up as it comes in on the beach. A fish or two appears, hung by the gills in the meshes. A troop of innocent-looking fellows come darting along from the middle of the net, having just discovered that they are inside of something. Now the fact becomes universally known among the ensnared ; and they dart backward and forward by hundreds and by fifties, seeking escape. There is none. They are crowded closer and closer within their narrowing prison-house. The water thickens, rustles, boils with them. And now, a great throbbing slippery mass, they lie squeezed up together in the bag of the net, while two exultant captors run for baskets. And a boat-hook; for Uncle Jim points out a long black thong like a carter's whip, slung out once or twice above the seething whitefish, announcing the dreaded sting-ray; and certain wallops elsewhere advise of the presence of a shark. The baskets come. Two men take each, dip them full of flapping fish, carry them up the beach, and throw them down to die, between hot sun and hotter sand. After twenty minutes of such work, the dippers dip carefully, lest they get a stroke from the ray, who has sunk quietly to the bottom, or a nip from his cousin the "sea-attorney." Somebody has hit the "stinger," as they call him, and he wallops up to the surface, and snaps his long tail about. Suddenly a bold young fellow grips the extremity. of it, and with both hands holds tight

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