CHAPTER IX.
SOCIAL AND PARLOR LIFE.
We now pass over some months of the life with few words. I have tried
to portray it on the farm as it appeared to me, and leave you to think
that it continues on and on, ever in the same general current, through
the long, clear days and moonlight nights of summer, and the cooler
days and misty evenings of the later season, to the time when the
warning comes to the farmer to gather in the ripened products of his
labor.
I pass over the later autumn--when the fields are cleared of all but
the remains of vegetation, and we hear no more the songs of the
crickets and the multitudinous insect life that fills the air of the
August and September nights, as the full moon looks down on the fields
and meadow rich in foliage--to the time when the thought of the farmer
is for wood for the winter, for the preservation of the farming
implements, for making all things "taut and trig" about the barn and
houses to secure their warmth for the coming cold weather and snow;
past the day of the New England Thanksgiving, along to Christmas time,
saying only in passing that the leaders were much engaged in lecturing,
as well as with other duties.
One evening in autumn a party from the farm, myself the youngest of
them, started for Boston to hear one of a course of lectures.
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