On the contrary, I live in a constant state
of excitement, hurry, and necessity for immediate action.
The cows were continually getting out of pasture and into the corn; the
pigs, like the chickens, evinced decided preference for the garden. The
horse would break his halter and dart down the street, or, if in
pasture, would leap the barbed-wire fence, at the risk of laming his
legs for life, and dash into a neighbor's yard where children and babies
were sunning on the grass.
Rival butchers and bakers would drive up simultaneously from different
directions and plead for patronage and instant attention.
The vegetables must be gathered and carried to market; every animal was
ravenously hungry at all hours, and didn't hesitate to speak of it. The
magnificent peacock would wander off two miles, choosing the railroad
track for his rambles, and loved to light on Si Evans's barn; then a boy
must be detailed to recover the prize bird, said boy depending on a
reward. His modest-hued consort would seek the deep hedges back of a
distant swamp.
Friends would come from a distance to surprise and cheer me in my lonely
retreat just at the time that the butter must positively be made, while
the flowers were choking for water, smothered with weeds, "pus'ley," of
course, pre-eminent. Then a book agent would appear, blind, but doubly
persistent, with a five-dollar illustrated volume recounting minutely
the Johnstown horror. And one of my dogs would be apt at this crisis to
pursue and slay a chicken or poison himself with fly-paper.
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