Category: Essays, Letters & Speeches

Hope Farm Notes

Most of these notes were originally printed in the _Rural New-Yorker_ from week to week and covering a period of about 20 years. Many readers of that magazine have expressed the desire to have a collection of them in permanent form. It has been no easy task to make a selection...

Chapters

2. Part 2

Of course in every drama of human life there has to be a crisis where the actors come to blows, and it happened so in this case. There came one day particularly cold, and with a...

11. Part 11

“But that’s why they’ve got to be if the world is going ahead,” put in Grandpa. “What’s the matter with farming today, I’ll ask? Education has all gone to other things. Farmers...

9. Part 9

And one reason why there has grown up an industrial advantage in the town and city may perhaps be learned from another sermon in stones. Some years ago we had two boys on the fa...

8. Part 8

But there is one sure thing about digging potatoes—you work up a great appetite. At noon there came a most welcome parade up the lane. It was not a woman suffrage procession, bu...

10. Part 10

And Uncle Isaac finally had his chance. Perhaps you remember how at one time during the war things seemed dark enough. Our boys were swarming across the ocean, and submarines we...

4. Part 4

I enjoyed the crowd as much as the game. Many of you have no doubt read that description in “Ben Hur” of the motley crowd which surged out to the Crucifixion. Gibbon describes t...

12. Part 12

“But I saw this man’s bill for repairs”—but there came a jerk on the lines and “Get up!” and Tom put his mighty shoulders into the collar and pulled the load up to the shed, whi...

7. Part 7

You see, it was this way. I was a freshman at an agricultural college, at a time when these institutions were struggling hard to live. The average freshman thinks he is the salt...

5. Part 5

I told this as best I could before the fire while my weary friend listened, leaning back in his easy-chair with his hand shading his face. And when I stopped sleep had come to h...

14. Part 14

There is another thing about this trade that will interest dairymen. We found old Spot giving about 18 quarts of milk per day, on a feed of green cornstalks and a little grain....

6. Part 6

Bill was clean and sound at heart, and the French blood had given him a quick active brain. Instead of striking for the wilderness he headed for New York and he prospered. The o...

1. Part 1

Most of these notes were originally printed in the _Rural New-Yorker_ from week to week and covering a period of about 20 years. Many readers of that magazine have expressed the...

3. Part 3

A novelist could weave a startling romance out of the plain life record of this typical American woman. She was born in Massachusetts—coming from the best stock this country has...

13. Part 13

Two things have brought that to mind recently. My young friend, Henry Barkman, came the other day with an oration which he was to deliver before some political society. When a m...

15. Part 15

After supper the big man and his wife stood at the window looking out into the wet, dismal night. After a little hesitation he put his arm gently around her. She did not throw i...