"
Farmer assured me that this fine fellow--whose name I am ashamed to say
I have forgotten--did all the churning of the farm-dairy by imparting
his motive power to a wheel. This piece of ingenuity, Farmer informed
me, was originally and exclusively an inspiration from the intellect
which animated his, Farmer's, proper clod; nor was he greatly
exhilarated when I narrated to him the tradition of the turnspit, whose
memory, I regret to record, he spurned as that of a "mean cuss,"
destitute of that poetry which dwelleth in the pastoral associations of
the dairy.
Although not strictly in connection with the subject of this article, I
will here relate a story told to me, on the same occasion, by that old
farmer, because it struck me as being rather a good one, and is not
particularly long.
Seeing that I took notice of a smock-frocked rustic employed in
foddering the cattle,--a rustic whose legs and accent were to me
exclusively reminiscent of the pleasant roads and lanes of cheery
Somersetshire,--Farmer informed me that he was a newish importation,
having made his appearance about there early in the previous winter.
While snow, of such quality and in such quantity as they have it in
that region, was yet a novelty to the bumpkin, he was dispatched on
horseback, one day, to the neighboring village, strict instructions
being given him to ride carefully in the middle of the track, as,
treading in the deep snow, the horse might "ball,"--an expression
applied to taking up snow in the hollow of the hoof, which causes the
animal to stumble.
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