Lesson 5 A Boy on a Farm

Charles Dudley Warner( b.1829) was born at Plainfield,Mass. In 1851 he graduated at Hamilton College,and in 1856 was admitted to the bar at Philadelphia,but moved to Chicago to practice his profession. There he remained until 1860,when he became connected with the press at Hartford,Conn.,and has ever since devoted himself to literature. "My Summer in a Garden," "Saunterings,"and "Backlog Studies" are his best known works. The following extract is from "Being a Boy."

Say what you will about the general usefulness of boys,it is my impression that a farm without a boy would very soon come to grief. What the boy does is the life of the farm. He is the factotum,always in demand,always expected to do the thousand indispensable things that nobody else will do. Upon him fall all the odds and ends,the most difficult things.

After everybody else is through,he has to finish up. His work is like a woman's,—perpetually waiting on others. Everybody knows how much easier it is to eat a good dinner than it is to wash the dishes afterwards. Consider what a boy on a farm is required to do,—things that must be done,or life would actually stop.

It is understood,in the first place,that he is to do all the errands,to go to the store,to the post office,and to carry all sorts of messages. If he had as many legs as a centiped,they would tire before night. His two short limbs seem to him entirely inadequate to the task. He would like to have as many legs as a wheel has spokes,and rotate about in the same way.

This he sometimes tries to do; and the people who have seen him "turning cart wheels"along the side of the road,have supposed that he was amusing himself and idling his time;he was only trying to invent a new mode of locomotion,so that he could economize his legs,and do his errands with greater dispatch.

He practices standing on his head,in order to accustom himself to any position. Leapfrog is one of his methods of getting over the ground quickly. He would willingly go an errand any distance if he could leapfrog it with a few other boys.

He has a natural genius for combining pleasure with business. This is the reason why,when he is sent to the spring for a pitcher of water,he is absent so long; for he stops to poke the frog that sits on the stone,or,if there is a penstock,to put his hand over the spout,and squirt the water a little while.

He is the one who spreads the grass when the men have cut it; he mows it away in the barn; he rides the horse,to cultivate the corn,up and down the hot,weary rows; he picks up the potatoes when they are dug; he drives the cows night and morning; he brings wood and water,and splits kindling; he gets up the horse,and puts out the horse; whether he is in the house or out of it,there is always something for him to do.

Just before the school in winter he shovels paths; in summer he turns the grindstone. He knows where there are lots of wintergreens and sweet flags,but instead of going for them,he is to stay indoors and pare apples,and stone raisins,and pound something in a mortar. And yet,with his mind full of schemes of what he would like to do,and his hands full of occupations,he is an idle boy,who has nothing to busy himself with but school and chores!

He would gladly do all the work if somebody else would do the chores,he thinks; and yet I doubt if any boy ever amounted to anything in the world,or was of much use as a man,who did not enjoy the advantages of a liberal education in the way of chores.