The Fat of the Land Part 19

"See here, boys, don't you see that you're sending your n.o.ble Swede to his Lutzen before his time,--not dead, indeed, but dead drunk? This isn't the sort of medicine for either of you; you should have been asleep three hours ago. I'll take your last victim home."

We heard no more from any of the fighters until nine in the morning. In looking them over I found that the Swede had as sore a head as either of the others, though he had never taken a blow.

Many friends came to see the boys during the days of their seclusion, to congratulate them on their fortunate escape, and to compliment them on their skill and courage. The lads enjoyed being made much of, and their convalescence was short and cheerful. Of course Sir Tom was the most constant and most enthusiastic visitor. The warm-hearted Irishman loved the boys always, but now he seemed to venerate them. The successful club fight appealed to his national instincts as nothing else could have done.

"With twenty years off and a shillalah in me hand I would have been proud to stand with you. By the Lord, I'm asking too much! I'll yield the twenty years and only ask for the stick!" And his cane went whirling around his head, now guarding, now striking, and now with elaborate flourishes, after the most approved Donny-brook fashion.

"But, me friend Jarvis, what is this you have on your face? Pond's Extract! Oh, murder! What is the world coming to when fresh beef and usquebaugh are crowded to the wall by bad-smelling water! Look at me nose; it is as straight as G.o.d made it, and yet many a time it has been knocked to one side of me face or spread all over me features. Nothing but whiskey and raw beef could ever coax it back! It's G.o.d's mercy if you are not deformed for life, me friend. Such privileges are not to be neglected with impunity. Let me bathe your face with whiskey and put a beef-steak poultice after it, and I'll have you as handsome as a girl in three days."

"Give me the steak and whiskey inside and I'll feel handsome at once,"

said Jarvis.

"Oh, the rashness of youth!" said Sir Tom. "But I'll not say a word against it. Youth is the greatest luck in the world, and I'll not copper it."

And then our sporting friend grew reminiscent and told of a time at Limmer's when the marquis and he occupied beds in the same room, not unlike our boys' room--only smoky and dingy--and poulticed their battered faces with beef, and used usquebaugh inside and outside, after ten friendly rounds.

"Queensbary's nose never resumed entirely after that night, but mine came back like rubber. Maybe it was the beef--maybe it was usquebaugh; me own preference is in favor of the latter."

Sir Tom came every day so long as the boys were confined to the place, and each day he was able to develop some new incident connected with the battle which called for applause. After hearing Lars tell his story for the fourth time, he gave him a ten-dollar note, saying:--

"You did n.o.bly for a Swede, Mr. Gustavus Adolphus, but I would give ten tenners to have had your place and your shillalah,--a Swede for a match-lock, but an Irishman for a stick."

Jack had hardly recovered when he was waited on by a committee from the mine with a request that he would make another speech. He was asked to make good his offer of bonding the property, and also to formulate a plan of cooperation for the guidance of the men. Jack had the plans for a cooperative mining village well digested, and was anxious to get them before the miners. As soon as he was fit he went to Gordonville to try to organize the work. Jarvis of course went with him, and Bill Jackson and Sir Tom would not be denied; they did not say so, but they looked as if they thought some diversion might be found. In spite of the influence of strong whiskey, however, the meeting pa.s.sed off peacefully. The results that grew from this effort at reformation were so great and so far-reaching that they deserve a book for their narration.

CHAPTER XLIV

DEEP WATERS

For sharp contrasts give me the dull country. The unexpected is the usual in small and in great things alike as they happen on a farm, and I make no apology to the reader for entering them in my narrative. I only ask him, if he be a city man, to take my word for the truth as to the general facts. To some elaboration and embellishment I plead guilty, but the groundwork is truth, and the facts stated are as real as the foundations of my buildings or the cows in my stalls. If the fortunate reader be a country man, he will need no a.s.surance from me, for his eyes have seen and his ears have heard the strange and startling episodes with which the quiet country-side is filled. I do not dare record all the adventures which cl.u.s.tered around us at Four Oaks. People who know only the monotonous life of cities would not believe the half if told, and I do not wish to invite discredit upon my story of the making of the factory farm.

The incidents I have given of the strike at Gordon's mine are substantially correct, and I would love to follow them to their sequel,--the cooperative mine; but as that is a story by itself, I cannot do it now. I promise myself, however, the pleasure of writing a history of this innovation in coal-mining at an early date. It is worth the world's knowing that a copartnership can exist between three hundred equal partners without serious friction, and that community in business interests on a large scale can be successfully managed without any effort to control personal liberty, either domestic, social, or religious. Indeed, I believe the success of this experiment is due largely to the absence of any attempt to superintend the private interests of its members,--the only bond being a common financial one, and the one requisite to membership, ability to save a portion of the wages earned.

But to go back to farm matters. In August the ground was stirred for the second time around the young trees. To do this, the mulch was turned back and the surface for a s.p.a.ce of three feet all around the tree was loosened by hoe or mattock, and the mulch was then returned. The trees were vigorous, and their leaves had the polish of health, in spite of the dry July and August. The mulching must receive the credit for much of this thrift, for it protected the soil from the rays of the sun and invited the deep moisture to rise toward the surface. Few people realize the amount of water that enters into the daily consumption of a tree. It is said that the four acres of leaf surface of a large elm will transpire or yield to evaporation eight tons of water in a day, and that it takes more than five hundred tons of water to produce one ton of hay, wheat, oats, or other crop. This seems enormous; but an inch of rain on an acre of ground means more than a hundred tons of water, and precipitation in our part of the country is about thirty-six inches per annum, so that we can count on over thirty-six hundred tons of water per acre to supply this tremendous evaporation of plant life.

Water-pot and hose look foolish in the face of these figures; indeed, they are poor makeshifts to keep life in plants during pinching times. A much more effective method is to keep the soil loose under a heavy mulch, for then the deep waters will rise. In our climate the tree's growth for the year is practically completed by July 15, and fortunately dry times rarely occur so early. We are, therefore, pretty certain to get the wood growth, no matter how dry the year, since it would take several years of unusual drought to prevent it. Of course the wood is not all that we wish for in fruit trees; the fruit is the main thing, and to secure the best development of it an abundant rainfall is needed after the wood is grown. If the rain doesn't come in July and August, heavy mulching must be the fruit-grower's reliance, and a good one it will prove if the drought doesn't continue more than one year. After July the new wood hardens and gets ready for the trying winter. If July and August are very wet, growth may continue until too late for the wood to harden, and it consequently goes into winter poorly prepared to resist its rigors. The result is a killing back of the soft wood, but usually no serious loss to the trees. The effort to stimulate late summer growth by cultivation and fertilization is all wrong; use manures and fertilizers freely from March until early June, but not later. The fall mulch of manure, if used, is more for warmth than for fertility; it is a blanket for the roots, but much of its value is leached away by the suns and rains of winter.

I felt that I had made a mistake in not sowing a cover crop in my orchard the previous year. There are many excellent reasons for the cover crop and not one against it. The first reason is that it protects the land from the rough usage and wash of winter storms; the second, that it adds humus to the soil; and the third, if one of the legumes is used, that it collects nitrogen from the air, stores it in each knuckle and joint, and holds it there until it is liberated by the decay of the plant. As nitrogen is the most precious of plant foods, and as the nitrate beds and deposits are rapidly becoming exhausted, we must look to the useful legumes to help us out until the scientists shall be able to fix the unlimited but volatile supply which the atmosphere contains, and thus to remove the certain, though remote, danger of a nitrogen famine. That this will be done in the near future by electric forces, and with such economy as to make the product available for agricultural purposes, is reasonably sure. In the meantime we must use the vetches, peas, beans, and clovers which are such willing workers.

The legumes fulfil the three requisites of the cover crop: protection, humus, and the storing of nitrogen. That was why, when the corn in the orchard was last cultivated in July, I planted cow peas between the rows. The peas made a fair growth in spite of the dry season, and after the corn was cut they furnished fine pasture for the brood sows, that ate the peas and trampled down the vines. In the spring ploughing this black mat was turned under, and with it went a store of fertility to fatten the land. Cow peas were sowed in all the corn land in 1897, and the rule of the farm is to sow corn-fields with peas, crimson clover, or some other leguminous plant. As my land is divided almost equally each year between corn and oats, which follow each other, it gets a cover crop turned under every two years over the whole of it. Great quant.i.ties of manure are hauled upon the oat stubble in the early spring, and these fields are planted to corn, while the corn stubble is fertilized by the cover crop, and oats are sown. The land is taxed heavily every year, but it increases in fertility and crop-making capacity. For the past two years my oats have averaged forty-seven bushels and my corn nearly sixty-eight bushels per acre. There is no waste land in my fields, and we have made such a strenuous fight against weeds that they no longer seriously tax the land. The wisdom of the work done on the fence rows is now apparent. The ploughing and seeding made it easy to keep the brush and weeds down; hay gathered close to the fences more than pays us for the mowing; and we have no tall weed heads to load the wind with seeds.

This is a matter which is not sufficiently considered by the majority of farmers, for weeds are allowed to tax the land almost as much as crops do, and yet they pay no rent. Fence lines and corners are usually breeding beds for these pests, and it will pay any landowner to suppress them.

CHAPTER XLV

DOGS AND HORSES

It was definitely decided in August that Jane was not to go back to Farmington. We had all been of two minds over this question, and it was a comfort to have it settled, though I always suspect that my share of it was not beyond the suspicion of selfishness.

Jane was just past nineteen. She had a fair education, so far as books go, and she did not wish to graduate simply for the honor of a diploma.

Indeed, there were many studies between her and the diploma which she loathed. She could never understand how a girl of healthy mind could care for mathematics, exact science, or dead languages. English and French were enough for her tongue, and history, literature, and metaphysics enough for her mind.

"I can learn much more from the books in your library and from the dogs and horses than I can at school, besides being a thousand times happier; and oh, Dad, if you will let me have a forge and workshop, I will make no end of things."

This was a new idea to me, and I looked into it with some interest. I knew that Jane was deft with her fingers, but I did not know that she had a special wish to cultivate this deftness or to put it to practical use.

"What can you do with a forge?" said I. "You can't shoe the horses or sharpen the ploughs. Can you make nails? They are machine-made now, and you couldn't earn ten cents a week, even at horse-shoe nails."

"I don't want to make nails, Dad; I want to work in copper and bra.s.s, and iron, too, but in girl fashion. Mary Town has a forge in Hartford, and I spent lots of Sat.u.r.days with her. She says that I am cleverer than she is, but of course she was jollying me, for she makes beautiful things; but I can learn, and it's great fun."

"What kind of things does this young lady make, dear?"

"Lamp-shades, paper-knives, hinges, bag-tops, buckles, and lots of things. She could sell them, too, if she had to. It's like learning a trade, Dad."

"All right, child, you shall have a forge, if you will agree not to burn yourself up. Do you roll up your sleeves and wear a leather ap.r.o.n?"

"Why, of course, just like a blacksmith; only mine will be of soft brown leather and pinked at the edges."

So Jane was to have her forge. We selected a site for it at once in the grove to the east of the house and about 150 yards away, and set the carpenter at work. The shop proved to be a feature of the place, and soon became a favorite resort for old and young for five o'clock teas and small gossiping parties. The house was a shingled cottage, sixteen by thirty-two, divided into two rooms. The first room, sixteen by twenty, was the company room, but it contained a work bench as well as the dainty trappings of a girl's lounging room. In the centre of the wall that separated the rooms was a huge brick chimney, with a fireplace in the front room and a forge bed in the rear room, which was the forge proper.

I suppose I must charge the $460 which this outfit cost to the farm account and pay yearly interest on it, for it is a fixture; but I protest that it is not essential to the construction of a factory farm, and it may be omitted by those who have no daughter Jane.

There were other things hinging on Jane's home-staying which made me think that, from the standpoint of economy, I had made a mistake in not sending her back to Farmington. It was not long before the dog proposition was sprung upon me; insidiously at first, until I had half committed myself, and then with such force and sweep as to take me off my prudent feet. My own faithful terrier, which had dogged my heels for three years, seemed a member of the family, and reasonably satisfied my dog needs. That Jane should wish a terrier of some sort to tug at her skirts and claw her lace was no more than natural, and I was quite willing to buy a blue blood and think nothing of the $20 or $30 which it might cost. We canva.s.sed the list of terriers,--bull, Boston, fox, Irish, Skye, Scotch, Airedale, and all,--and had much to say in favor of each. One day Jane said:--

"Dad, what do you think of the Russian wolf-hound?"

"Fine as silk," said I, not seeing the trap; "the handsomest dog that runs."

"I think so, too. I saw some beauties in the Seabright kennels. Wouldn't one of them look fine on the lawn?--lemon and white, and so tall and silky. I saw one down there, and he wasn't a year old, but his tail looked like a great white ostrich feather, and it touched the ground.

Wouldn't it be grand to have such a dog follow me when I rode. Say, Dad, why not have one?"

"What do you suppose a good one would cost?"

"I don't know, but a good bit more than a terrier, if they sell dogs by size. May I write and find out?"

"There's no harm in doing that," said I, like the jellyfish that I am.

Jane wasted no time, but wrote at once, and at least seventeen times each day, until the reply came, she gave me such vivid accounts of the beauties of the beasts and of the pleasure she would have in owning one, that I grew enthusiastic as well, and quite made up my mind that she should not be disappointed. When the letter came, there was suppressed excitement until she had read it, and then excitement unsuppressed.

"Dad, we can have Alexis, son of Katinka by Peter the Great, for $125!

See what the letter says: 'Eleven months old, tall and strong in quarters, white, with even lemon markings, better head than Marksman, and a sure winner in the best of company.' Isn't that great? And I don't think $125 is much, do you?"

"Not for a horse or a house, dear, but for a dog--"