Clerical Farming
Oes It pay? “we are every day asked by citizens who at this season begin to wonder what they will do with themselves next summer. “How did the cabbages turn out?” interrogates an Incredulous parishioner with a twinkle in his eye, and a laugh twitching at the corner of his mouth. Is there not a fatal repulsion between pen and hoe? Can one who Is shepherd of a city flock keep Southdowns from getting the hoofrot? How much out of pocket at the end of the year?
We answer, that clerical farming does pay. Notwithstanding a weasel invaded the poultryyard, and here and there a chicken died of the “gaps,” and one of the frosts saved us a great
deal of trouble picking peaches, and one day,
I/O CLERICAL FARMING.
in the process of making butter, “soda ash” was taken for salt, and the caterpillars of our neighborhood were very fond of celery, and the drinking of milk without any chalk at first made us all sick — the shock too sudden for the constitution — still we feel that we made our fortune last summer. With a long-handled hoe we turned up more than our neighbors dreamt of. Though a few hundred dollars out of pocket (a fact we never acknowledged to agricultural infidels), we were physically born again. We have walked stronger ever since, for our walk last summer In the furrow. Our hay-pitching was an anodyne that has given us sound sleep all winter. On our new grindstone we sharpened our appetite, and have since been able to cut through anything set before us. We went out In the spring feeling that the world was going to ruin; we came back in the autumn persuaded that we were on the eve of the millennium.
Like all other new beginners, our first attempt at buying a horse resulted In our getting bitten, not by the horse. From Job’s vivid description we vent forth to look for a horse whose “neck was clothed with thunder.” We found him. We liked the thunder very well, but not so well the lightning that flew out of his feet the first time he kicked the dash-board to pieces. We give as our experience that thunder is most too lively to plough with. We found him dishonest at both ends. Not only were his heels untrustworthy, but his teeth, and the only reason we escaped being bitten by the horse, as well as the jockey who sold him, was that we are gifted with powers of locomotion sufficient for any emergency, especially if there be sufficient propulsion advancing from the rear. Job shall never choose another horse for us. We telegraphed to the jockey, “Come and take your old nag, or I will sue you!” He did not budge, for he was used to being sued. Having changed our mind, we telegraphed, offering to pay him for the honor of swindling us, and the telegram was successful. We gave him a withering look as he rode away, but he did not observe it.
Our first cow was more successful. She has fu rnished the cream of a good many jokes to our witty visitors, and stands, I warrant, this cold day, chewing her cud like a philosopher — the calmness of die blue sky in her eyes, and die breadi of last summer’s pasture-field sweeping from her nostrils. Gentle thing! When the city boys came out, and played” Catch,*’ runnlne under her, or aftervard standlnor on both sides, four boys milking at once, she dissented not. May she never want for stalks or slops!
We were largely successful with one of our two pigs. Our taste may not be thoroughly cultured, but we think a pig of six weeks is positively handsome. It has such an innocent look out of its eyes, and a voice so capable of nice shades of inflection, whether expressive of alarm or want. Such a cunning wink of the nose, such artistic twist of tail! But one of the twain fell to acting queer one day. It went about, as if, like its ancestors of Gadara, unhappily actuated, till after a while it up and died. We had a farrier to doctor it, and poor thing! It was bled, and mauled, till we knew not whether to ascribe its demise to the disease or the malpractice of the medical adviser. But its companion flourished. We had clergymen, lawyers, and artists admire and praise it. We found recreation in looking at its advancement, and though the proverb says that you “cannot make a whistle out of a pig’s tail,” figuratively speaking, I have made a dozen out of that mobile and unpromising material.
Our geese flourished. Much-maligned birds! They are wise instead of foolish, save in the one item of not knowing how to lower their necks when you want them to go under the fence. (Who of us has not one weak point of character?) They are affectionate, and die if shut up alone, and with wild outcry sympathize with any unfortunate comrade whose feathers have been plucked. From their wings they furnished the instrument for writing Walter Scott’s “Rob Roy,” and Thomas Carlyle’s “Sartor Resartus.” Worth more than an eagle any day, have better morals, do pluck more nutriment out of the mud than eaeles do out of the sun. Save for Fourth of July orations eagles are of but little worth, filthy, cruel, ugly at the beak, fierce at the eye, loathsome at the claw; but give me a flock of geese,
white - breasted, yellow - billed, coming up at night-fall with military tramp, in single file led on, till nearing the barn - yard they take wing, and with deafening clang the flying artillery wheel to their bivouacs for the night.
Yes, clerical farming does pay. Out on the place we won the medal every day for pictures hung with fire - loops in the sky - gallery; and for machinery by which the sun drew water, and the trees pumped up the juices, and the shower and sunshine wove carpets better than Axminister for Brindle and Durham to walk on.
If a city clergyman have no higher Idea than a crop of turnips or corn, he had better not take a farm. It will be cheaper to let somebody else’s hen lay the eggs, and to buy your tomatoes by the peck. But he who would like to look out of his window and see “rain on the new-mown grass,” and at five o’clock would love to walk out and see “the day-spring from on high,” or in the garden hear Christ preaching from the text, “Consider the lilies,” or watch God feeding the ravens, or see him clothing “the grass of the field,” or in the gush of full moonlight learn the sweetness of the promise, “At evening tide it shall be light,” — let such a minister get a place in the country, and spend the weeks that he has usually passed among the bright shawls of starched watering-places, with his coat off, in check shirt, and coarse boots, listening while “mountains and all hills, fruitful trees and all cedars, beasts and all cattle, creeping things, and flying fowl” at matins and vespers praise the Lord; geranium and branch of appleblossom swinging their censers.