A MORNING ON A MOWER.
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ments, he agreed to try me. I proudly told him to lead on, to death or victory. Putting the harness on a team, he lead them, and me, to a half-mown meadow. There stood something which I at first took to be some kind of a patent go-cart, but the farmer said it was a mower, and further examination convinced me of the fact. He asked me if I had ever driven a mower. "Not for several years," I said. In fact, I had never driven one in my life, and had never seen one except in a wareroom.
First the farmer drove a round or two and I stumbled after, watching the process. Then I mounted the machine, boldly start-ed the horses and drove ahead. I speedily found a difficulty in steering straight along the edge of the grass. I either cut but half width, or left a fringe standing behind me. But at last I managed to go fairly straight, and kept on the line at least half the distance round. At the end of every round I had to stop and oil, and that made my hands dirty. But worst of all was the infernal jar and shake of the gearing. Such a rattling and jerking I never felt, and I have ridden over corduroy roads and new-built Kansas railways. I thought it would shake out my vertebrae, and mix my stomach, lungs and liver all up together. Then it never jerked twice in the same direction, but always found a new way. I had thirty-seven different aches in my back, but just as the thirty-eighth sent in its card I heard a most welcome sound, the dinner horn. I went to the house. My farmer asked me how I felt. "A little shaken up," I said. Really I expected to drop to pieces every moment, and caught myself looking back to see whether I had not lost some of my anatomy. But as yet I was all there.
After dinner my employer proposed to go and haul in millet from the field to the stack. I assented joyfully, glad to get away from that bone-shaking invention of
the devil, the mower. We drove off to the field. Here I was to load while the farmer pitched on. We went to work and I contrived to pile on the millet in what I thought very good shape. But when we started in I was speedily informed that one side was heavier than the other, and threatened to fall off before we reached the stack. Before we reached the yard I fell off, and part of the load with me. I was underneath. I crawled from under the pile, clawed the dust out of my eyes and the straw out of my mouth, and thought of resigning.
I had to admit that I didn't know how to stack. So I was placed on the load to pitch off. It was the beginning of the end. How that millet did catch and hang. I believe I could have made a serviceable rope by simply laying bunches of it slightly lapping; its natural adhesiveness would have held it together. When I tried to lift a forkful it seemed as if I had the entire load. Every straw seemed to act as a magnet and draw a hundred others after it. With many puffs and groans I contrived to tumble the load off, a little on the stack and much on the ground.
Then I made for the well, drank two or three gallons of water, lay down in the shade, called my employer to me, and respectfully, but firmly, handed in my resignation. I told him I was positively enchanted with farm life; that I would rather ride on a mowing machine than in a palace car; that pitching millet was a beautiful exercise, but considering what my past life had been I did not think myself worthy such exalted occupations. I hoped that after due repentance for my past errors, when I should live a better life, I would be fit to engage in such a delightful and ennobling pursuit; but at present I was all too unworthy.