THE OLD WAYS AND THE NEW.

Daily Telegraph (Napier), Issue 3145, 27 July 1881, Page 3

THE OLD WAYS AND THE NEW.

I've just come in from the meadow, wife, where the grass is tall and green • I hobbled out upon my cane to see John's new machine ; It made my old eyes snap again to see that mower mow, And I heaved a sigh for the scythe I swung some twenty years ago. Many and many's the day I've mowed 'neath tho rays of a scorching sun, Till I thought my poor old back would break ere my task for the day was done. I often think of the days of toil in the fields all over the farm, Till I feel the sweat on my wrinkled brow and the old pain come in my arm. It was hard work it was slow work, aswinging the old scythe then ; Unlike the mower that went through the grass like death through the ranks of men. I stood and looked till my old eyes ached, amazed at its speed and power— The work that it took me a day to do, done in one short hour. John said that I hadn't seen the half ; when he put it into his wheat, I shall see it reap and rake it and put it in bundles neat; Then soon a Yankee will come along, and set to work and larri

To reap it, and thrash it, and bag it up and! send it into the barn. John kinder laughed when he said it, but I said to the hired men : " I have seen so much on my pilgrimage through my three score years and ten, That I wouldn't be surprised to see a railroad in the air, Or a Yankeee in a flyin' ship a goin' 'most anywhere." There's a difference in the work I done and the work my boys now do : Steady and slow is the good old way, worry and fret is the new. But somehow I think there was happiness crowned into those toiling days, That fact young men of the present won't see till they change their ways. To think that I should live to see work done in this wonderful way ! Old tools are of little service now, and farmin' is almost play ; The women have got their sewin' machines, their wringers, and every such thing, And now play croquet in the dooryard, or sit in the parlor and sing. 'Twasn't you that had it so easy, wife, in the days so long gone by ; You riz up early, and sat up late, a-toiling for you and I; There were cows to milk, there was butter to make, and many a day did you stand A-washin' my toil-stained garments, and wringin' 'em out by hand. Ah, wife, our children will never see the hard work we have seen, For tho heavy task and the long task is now done with a machine. No longer the noise of a scythe I hear; the mower is there, hear it afar P A-rattlin' along through the long stout grass with the noise of a railroad car. Well, the old tools now are shoved away ; they stand a-gatherin' rust. Like ninny an old man I have seen put .'isit'e with only a crust; When the eyes grow dim, when the step is weak, when the strength goes out of his arm, The best thing a poor old man can do is to hold the deed of the farm. There is one old way that they can't improve, although it has been tried ; By men who have studied and studied, and worried till they died ; It has shown undimmed for ages, like gold refined from its dross— It's the way to the kingdom of heaven by the simple way of the cross.