of salt, cooks them gently a few
minutes--dishes them. Then he dashes more butter and some water from the
tea-kettle into the frying-pan--for he is as fond of gravy as "Todgers'
boarders"--pours this over the mushrooms, and sits down to a feast that
has some poetry about it.

The boy brings a sharp appetite to his few pleasures. All agreeable
thoughts float in his mind during his summer nooning doze when he lies
on the grass after dinner waiting for the sun to strike the west side of
the farmhouse chimneys, which, standing square north and south, serve
for sun-dials. And in haymaking, when he is "mowing away" far above the
"purline beam" in the barn as fast as a man in the hayrack can toss the
hay up to him, and the air is heated like a furnace by the hot haymaking
sun on the shingles close above his head, and his shirt is full of
timothy-seed, and he is almost dying with exhaustion, suddenly he hears
the sound of rain pattering on the roof. The hay in the meadow will be
spoiled, but down he slides to enjoy an hour's rest in the cool lower
world of the barn-floor. And when the Fourth of July comes, and the
farm-boys gather at The Corners and fire off old shot-guns, pistols, an
anvil, a cannon and empty thread-spools, then and there is the poetry of
the whole harvest-season for the boy. The harvest-moon, bringer of hot
days and "bammy" nights to glaze the corn, may be the admiration of
many, but is not so to the boy. It is accompanied by a special grievance
to him: at the end of days' works that take the tuck out of him to the
last fragment he has to go for the cows, and to come home late after
everybody else has washed up and is partly through supper. The hunter's
moon too, large, mild and beaming though it may be, is a thing of
disgust to the boy, for it marks the beginning of the season when, after
chores are finished and the men are sitting comfortably around the
kitchen fire, he has to split kindlings in the woodhouse for the hired
girl, and to fill the four wood-boxes with which the hill farmhouse
warms its kitchen, dining-room, nursery and parlor.

The hill-farmer's mind is rich in suggestions of work for a boy. After
haying, harvesting and everything else is done, you will find that lad
down cellar of a dark morning by the light of a tallow candle cutting
bushels and bushels of potatoes for the cows with a "slice"--one of
those antique long iron shovels used about a brick-oven. You will find
him foddering forty