FARM MEMORIES.

Auckland Star, Volume XXXVII, Issue 146, 20 June 1906, Page 7

FARM MEMORIES.

Lowell Otus Reese, in the "New York Journal." is* responsible for some very amusing skits on farm life, from which the following are extracts: — THE BEE. There are two kinds of Bees—Honey and Bumble. Of the two varieties I think the Bumble has caused me more pain and anxiety thau anything else -that ever embittered my young life. A large, healthy adult Bumblebee carries more woe and misery on tlie end of his tail than ever Valkyrie on the point of her dead-white spear. I smile - when I read in these degenerate days of the hundred-yard sprinting record being lowered a quarter of a second. But I don't say anything. Let these young things frisk and caper and imagine they are running some. Let them enjoy their sweet delusion. But down deep in icy heart I know of many a time and oft when, acting as pacemaker for an ambitions Bumblebee, I made the hundreds in a time that would have wrecked any stop watch beyond the possibility of repair.

That sinister hum! Even yet I wince when I think about it. Once on the crowded street the trolley wire buzzed over my head, and I ran three blocks, whipping my hat about my head, before I remembered where I was. Such was the force of habit, remembered through all those 3-ears from my childhood's happy hour. Once upon a time I was told that hell was full of Bumblebees. Never since that sad day have I dared even peep through a knothole at Sin. T. could not stand that Bumblebee hell. And in that mine is much like other people's religion. Many people I have known would have been wicked if they hadn't been afraid to. THE HEN. The hen is a being wliose aim in life is to lay eggs when you don't need them, and to go on a vacation at a time when an egg is like a rare jewel, the sight of which causes eveu the multi-millionaire to shed tears of honest joy. It is her fixed habit to lay' one egg a day and x spend two days cackling about it. Luther Burbank is even now working on a scheme to turn the cackle

. *• N, ' ;, ; * ■ ■ ■ into eggs. If he succeeds, one he* would make the average farmer rich beyond the dreams of avarice. ' The Rooster is a bogus Hen. To judge by his cackle you would swear he had laid a bushel. The Hen lays the egg and .the Rooster tries to take the credit, when, to be honest about it, he couldn't lay an egg to save his life. I never saw. him try it, but I am willing to take a chance. "■ / '■■' Hens have much perseverance, ummixed with a siingle streak of judgment —and therein they aw nearly human. I have seen a Hen sit on a, doorknob for' six weeks and refuse to believe aba couldn't hatch a dozen chicks out of it if we'd only let her have'another try at it. I've seen people like, that—except-; ing that when the peoplekgot. through with their discouraging enterprise thejr, didn't have even the doorknob left. There .isn't any music in the Hen's voice, and I wonder why she uses it so much. But in that she likewise rcsemr bles people. I've noticed that it is always the worst singers that are' the most anxious to warble; and the man with nothing to say says it all the time. Woman talks forever, but none wisteth what it is all about. Selah.