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Ekfrid, Jan. 3.—We are a hopelessly unromantic people. We go about even the most delightful of our affairs in a sadly hum-drum way. Take the opening of an apple-pit in winter, for instance. If the "well-greaved Greeks" had anything like this in their lives they would have approached the task with appropriate songs and ceremonial dances. They would have done justice to the winter-ripened apple,

"That hath been

Cooled a long age in the deep-delved earth,

Tasting of Flora and the country green,

Dance and provençal song and sunburnt mirth."

Now notice how prosaically the Canadian farmer undertakes the work. After the women folks have been nagging him for a couple of weeks he begins to feel apple-hungry himself, and some fine morning he takes the long-handled shovel and an old axe and proceeds to open the pit. The snow is first carefully shovelled away from the little treasure-house of autumn fruitfulness and then the covering of frozen earth is chopped away. This uncovers the protecting layer of straw, which is removed, laying bare the apples. What a gush of perfume burdens the frosty air! Spies, Baldwins, Russets, and Pippins give their savour aright, and if a man had a touch of poetry in his soul he would begin at once to fashion lyrics. But there is no poetry. He simply remarks to himself that they have kept well, fills a bag, stuffs back the straw and piles on the earth and snow to keep out the frost. He then carries the bag to the kitchen and announces that he expects to have "apple-sass" for dinner. Possibly he wipes an apple on his sleeve and eats it while going to the barn to finish his chores, but on the whole he treats the event as if it were an ordinary part of the day's work.

Although our Canadian apples are good at all times, they are now at their best. There is a flavour to a winter-ripened apple that surpasses praise. It has a fullness and tang that provoke the appetite more than it satisfies. A winter evening spent around a roaring fire with a plateful of well-polished apples within reach, and old friends to talk with, is something to cheer even the soul of a pessimist. As for the children, their delight is twofold when the apple-pit has been opened. Not only do they gorge themselves, but they dream of the affluence they will enjoy by bartering apples at school. The school price of apples varies, but yesterday a sound, rosy Spy was disposed of for two empty rifle cartridges (thirty-two long), the stub of a lead-pencil, and a copper harness rivet without a washer. From this you can figure out how much boy bric-a-brac a bushel would buy. It is possible that it was by just such bartering as this that some of our financial magnates developed their wonderful business sagacity. Perhaps it was by carrying the best apples to the teacher that they learned the first principles of lobbying and the value of standing in with the powers that be. It does not seem at all unreasonable to suppose that the boy who learns at school how to dispose of his apples most profitably will later pick plums and cut melons. Our educational system may have sides to it that are not recognised by the Education Department.

The man who induced the pioneers of this district to plant orchards should have his name emblazoned on the pages of history like "apples of gold in pictures of silver." I remember him as a hale Scotchman of eighty, to whom a twenty-mile walk to visit an old friend was simply a holiday jaunt. In his youth he could do fifty miles a day and sell trees at every farmhouse he passed. He canvassed the country from London to Windsor, and probably sold more trees than any other agent that ever covered the territory. He was known as an honourable man, and when he praised a particular apple his words were believed. By his efforts an orchard was planted on almost every farm, and although the apples he sold could not compare with the highly-developed apples of the present, they were good, and demonstrated beyond a doubt what a glorious district this is for fruit. Most of the early orchards were planted too closely because of the scarcity of cleared land, and the trees were seldom pruned properly, but they yielded a store of apples that added a zest to the simple fare of the pioneers. The orchards he sold have all died out, but they have been replaced by others, for no one here would think of being without apples. I know of only one tree of his selling that is still in existence. When a mature tree it suffered some injury that checked it for a time until a second growth started near the root. The original tree died away, but the second growth is bearing every year, and it seems destined to a long lease of life. I do not know the age which apple trees attain, but this one is now over sixty years old. It is what was called a rib apple, a kind no longer known to the nurseries. In its time it was counted the best apple in the township, but it cannot compare with the wonderful fruit of the present. It furnished good eating in its day, and deserves to have a tablet affixed to it as a survivor of the pioneer orchards.

It is a pleasure to be able to record the passing of the dried apple. It was the precursor of the prune as a boarding-house dish, and was once widely used as a substitute for food. They used to have paring-bees, where the young people peeled, quartered, and cored the apples, and then threaded them like beads to be strung up over the stove to dry. While drying they served as "a murmurous haunt of flies." Every farmhouse once had its apple-screen, made of laths, which was hung over the stove with the pipe going through it for the purpose of drying apples. Its contents were also popular with the flies, and, as screen-doors were unknown then, you can guess how plentiful the flies were. Dried apples were once an article of commerce, but it is long since I have seen any or have been insulted by having them offered to me at the table. I am told that, although the farmers no longer dry apples, there are factories where apples are desiccated—desecrated, one woman explained—and that they may be found wherever prunes and dried apricots are offered for sale. It may be so; I do not know, and do not want to know. I am sure that dried apples by any other name would taste as leathery and unpalatable. I am content to know that they are no longer used in the country. Sound apples, fresh from the pit, are good enough for me.

Jan. 5.—I used to wonder why our nature writers never write stories about the common domestic cow. She is certainly of more importance than wild animals, and yet she seldom figures in literature except in the herd book and in market reports. I say this used to puzzle me, but it puzzles me no longer. Charles G. D. Roberts and Thompson Seton and Kipling can tell us the secret thoughts of wolves and bears and tigers and crocodiles and such critters just as easy as easy, but cows are beyond them. Cows are deep. They think thoughts that are beyond the poets. You can't fool me about cows, because I am living with them just now. Acting as valet to a bunch of cows and young cattle has given me a chance to study them closely, and my respect for them is increasing every day. Cows certainly think, but only when they have the proper environment. They don't think all over the place like college professors and eminent people generally. It has always been very disconcerting to me to meet great men on the street, or in the railway station, or on the crowded rear platform of a street car, and to find them thinking all the time. They seem to have developed thinking into a bad habit, but not so with cows. Cows can spend days and days without thinking, but when the conditions are right they think unutterable things. And they are very human in this. A well-known writer told me once that he can never think freely unless he begins by thinking about a telegraph pole. He couldn't explain why it was, but if he once got his mind completely concentrated on a telegraph pole ideas would at once come surging into his brain. It is the same with cows, and the object that inspires them to their loftiest flights is a gate. Let no one be surprised at this. Even philosophers have mighty things to say about gates. What says Omar?

"Up from earth's centre to the Seventh gate

I rose, and on the throne of Saturn sate,

And many a knot unriddled by the way

But not the master-knot of human fate."

Fate—there you have it. Fate is undoubtedly the favourite subject of thought with meditative cows. You have only to look at them and notice their awful solemnity and the gravity of their mild and magnificent eyes to know that they are not thinking of any ordinary matter like the beef trust, or the high cost of hay, or anything of that sort. But it is not enough to have a cow see a gate to start her thinking. You must try to drive her through it. In fact, I am not sure that one lone cow would start thinking even in a gate. You must have a herd of them and it usually works out in about this way. After you have run yourself out of breath gathering the herd the boss will take the lead and the skittish young cattle will be bringing up the rear. As soon as the boss gets into the gate where none of the others can pass her a great idea will strike her and she will stop to chew her cud and think it over. If you are in a hurry you will probably start yelling at her, but it will do no good. Nothing can interrupt her profound thoughts and your yelling will only disturb the young cattle and start them scampering around the field. In all probability you will start throwing clods and sticks, and if your aim is good you may jolt her through the gate, but you will find that before further progress can be made you will have to gather the young cattle again. When you get your little flock to the gate once more you will find that the deputy boss becomes seized of a great idea when she reaches the middle, and the business of yelling, throwing clods, and gathering the young cattle has to be done all over again. There have been times when it has taken me half an hour to get a thoughtful herd of cows through a twelve-foot gate, and by the time the last of the young cattle passed through, a hair's-breadth ahead of the toe of my boot, my temper "had gone where the dead crabs go." Still, I always solace myself with the reflection that I have been the first to discover that cows think.

But gates are not the only things that inspire cows. Doors also seem to have a very stimulating effect on their cerebral processes. Sometimes when I turn the cows out to water I just go down the line unloosing their chains. When the first cow reaches the door and gets a glimpse of the fair round world she stops to reflect on its beauty. The cows behind her, lacking this inspiration, begin to hook and bunt one another until the stable is a howling pandemonium, but the cow in the door is in no wise disturbed. She stands there and thinks, and thinks, and thinks. As for me, well—perhaps I hadn't better tell what I am thinking and saying. As a rule, before I am too severely trampled I manage to get hold of a fork and break the reverie of the thinker in the doorway. In my opinion Rodin missed a great opportunity when sculptoring "The Thinker." He should have hewn a cow out of marble rather than a man who looks like G. Bernard Shaw. When it comes to real thinking, give me a cow. I suspect that she gets as far with her problems as the best thinker of us all.

Now that I think of it, there is another cow problem that I should like to have solved. Does any man of wide experience know how to drive half-a-dozen cows across a ten-acre field without zigzagging back and forward until he has travelled about ten miles? Sometimes in the summer when I went to milk I would find that the cows were standing in the farthest corner of the field licking one another's ears and having a nice, quiet sociable time together. They would pay no attention to my alluring calls of "Co-Boss," and in the end I would have to hang the pails on the gate and go after them. Though they would be nicely grouped before I disturbed them, they would promptly spread out like a fan, and I would have to run along behind them driving each cow a few rods and then rushing on to the next. And each cow after I left her would stop and look at me with mild, wondering eyes as if trying to figure out just what I was trying to do. None of them would move except when I was raging behind them, and each time they moved they would move farther apart. If any one knows a practical method of keeping cows bunched while being driven across a field I am open for instruction. Cows are certainly useful and indispensable animals, but there are times when they are trying, very trying.

Jan. 6.—Last night the conversation turned on summer wood and the need of providing a supply.

"Good!" exclaimed the deponent, bubbling over with fool enthusiasm. "I need exercise, and a session at the end of a crosscut saw would do me a world of good."

As a matter of fact, winter life in the country does get monotonous when one has nothing to do but drive to school with the children, go to the post office for the mail, read papers, crack nuts, and eat apples. The prospect of varying matters by a few days' work in the woods was positively alluring.

This morning conditions were ideal for outdoor work. The sun was shining, and a faint north wind was breathing over the snow. Bluejays were squawking in the orchard and crows cawing in the woods. The "eager and nipping air" seemed to put steam in every living thing that was about, and to go crunching through the drifts with an axe over one's shoulder seemed large and primitive and manly. In the woods flakes of snow were sifting down from the branches and faintly pungent woodland odours gave an exhilarating touch to the air.

A beech that had been felled for some purpose, but found unsatisfactory, was first attacked. It was held clear of the snow by a log on which it rested and by its branches. As the saw bit into it with a metallic "tang, tang," the prospects for a pleasant and profitable day were excellent. Yanking a saw across a sound piece of timber seemed more like fun than anything else, and as exercise it was not unlike rowing.

The first cut was all right and as the block fell into the snow the achievement was celebrated with a deep-lunged "Wheeee!" of satisfaction. When the second block fell the overcoat was felt to be an encumbrance and was removed.

"Tang, tang!" whimpered the saw through the hard wood. Two cuts more were completed and then the ordinary coat was felt to be rather heavy and was accordingly thrown off.

"Tang, tang!" The sound was getting monotonous and breathing was becoming noticeably difficult. What of that? Professor James of Harvard has written an authoritative essay on "Second Wind," in which he shows that if one keeps at it he will soon get his "second wind," and will be in a better condition for work than when he started. Nature has provided us with wonderful reserves of strength if we will but persist until they are reached. I was certainly in need of second wind, for the first was almost gone. I was distinctly puffing. Another cut and I was gasping. By the time another cut was finished I had developed "Charley horse," glass arm, lumbago, asthma, and symptoms of apoplexy. As for breathing I was simply biting at the air. Sweat was dripping from my eyebrows and the tip of my nose, and I was in the condition one reaches in the hot room of the Turkish bath, when the rubber comes in and remarks: "You are in a fine sweat. Better come and have a rub down." But there was no rub down. That wretched saw was pulled away from me as often as I pulled it across, and there was no music in its "tang, tan-n-ng!" Just as I was coming to the conclusion that the world was full of sawdust and that I hadn't a friend on earth, the tree was all cut into blocks.

"Now we will go at that maple stub."

I grunted assent. The enthusiasm was all gone.

As we tramped towards the maple, tracks were noticed that started us guessing. They looked like two footprints close together a couple of feet apart. Was it a mink or a weasel? It seemed too big for a weasel. A light snow had fallen on the previous night and the fresh tracks were easy to follow. They were much more interesting than that maple stub and I insisted on following them. We might get a mink. I have known men to draw to a mink and catch a fur-lined overcoat, so why shouldn't I? About fifty yards further on the tracks disappeared in a hole in a snowdrift beside a log. We were certainly in luck. By using the axe and kicking vigorously the snow was soon removed and a snug nest of leaves and mouse fur was found in a hollow under the log. It was still warm, showing that the occupant was at home. A few pokes with the axe handle brought out a more than snow-white ermine with a black-tipped tail. For about five seconds I was as active as a political K.C. hustling for a vacant judgeship. There was enough ermine in sight to make a beginning on a judge's robe, but only for a few seconds. He disappeared into a hole that led under the stump of an uprooted tree and I was looking at the place as disconsolately as a political K.C. reading the notice of a rival's appointment. A brief investigation showed that he was safe from pursuit. There was nothing to do but go at that miserable maple stub.

The maple stub measured two feet at the stump and was as sound as a bone. The top had been broken off by a windstorm a year ago and ever since it had been seasoning. After a notch had been cut on the side towards which the tree was to be made to fall we proceeded with our Gladstonian task. Working a crosscut saw in its natural position is bad enough, but working it on its side to cut through a standing tree—Oh, well, everything has to end some time. Presently it came crashing down.

"As falls on Mount Alvernus

The thunder-smitten oak."

As the echoes died away another sound was heard. It was the call to dinner. Say, have you ever heard the call to dinner in circumstances such as have been described? It is the most joyous sound in the world. If the women-folks only knew how good their voices sound at such times, they would call oftener—and earlier.

During the dinner hour the ermine—everybody else called it a weasel, but I had the Century Dictionary to back me—was discussed and the fiat went forth that he must be trapped. Where hens are kept weasels and similar vermin are not popular. There was a vivid recollection of twenty-six chickens that had been killed by a weasel one night last summer, so this one must be destroyed. No objection was made, for setting a trap is easier work than dragging a crosscut saw through a maple log. Nevertheless I scorned the preparations that were made. The dictionary describes the weasel as being remarkable for cunning, wariness, and alertness. It quotes the proverb about "catching a weasel asleep" and gives the impression that this creature, above all others, is capable, as the nature-fakirs say, of matching the intelligence of man with his cunning. The preparations for trapping were such as would be laughed at by a young rat, not to mention an old one. A dead hen that had been in cold storage in a snowdrift for a couple of months was dug out and laid beside a stump near the creature's hole. Around the hen a little hut of rotten wood was built, leaving an opening at the bottom. In this an ordinary rat trap was placed without any attempt at concealment. The whole arrangement was one that a cow would avoid even if it was baited with turnips. It was absurd to think that a weasel would be so foolish as to walk into a danger so "gross and palpable."

A time always comes when excuses and shifts fail, and at last there was nothing for it but to tackle the crosscut saw again. My hinges all felt rusty, and how sore those blisters felt! The first cut warmed me up and I felt better, but the second cut brought back the symptoms of asthma and apoplexy. Then I thought of a story.

"Talking about weasels, did I ever tell you about the Presbyterian elder living less than twenty miles from here who broke the Sabbath to kill one? He is the strictest Sabbatarian in the county and keeps the Sabbath in a way that makes the blue laws of New England look frivolous. He has all of the Sabbath food, fuel, and water prepared on Saturday, goes to church three times, and will allow no visitors. Well, one Friday night last summer a weasel got into his hen-house and killed all his hens but three. On Saturday night he came back and finished the three. On the Sabbath morning the elder saw the vermin skulking about the barn, and throwing his record to the winds he took out his shotgun and peppered the weasel." (This story was good for a five-minute rest.)

Another cut. "Tang, tan-n-n-ng." You will notice how slow and long-drawn the sound was becoming when I drew back the saw.

When the cut was finished I just had enough breath left to start a discussion of the comet that is now appearing in the west. The papers have not told definitely whether it is Halley's comet or another visitor. But even that ended.

After the next cut I managed to work up a talk about the plans of the Hydro-electric and to paint in glowing colours the good times we would have when electricity would be used to heat houses and for cooking. It wouldn't be necessary to cut wood then. Whew!

While the next cut was coming off a blister broke and I couldn't think of anything to talk about, so we plunged recklessly into another. Then I began to count the strokes. I found it took five hundred to take off one block. That may not show well beside some of the records made at the sawing matches, but it must stand. About this time I thought it would be a good idea to take the measuring stick and mark off the rest of the stub. Twenty-nine more cuts. At five hundred strokes to the cut, you can figure out what that would amount to. When I realised what this meant I sat on the log and, as Meredith says, my "thoughts began to bloat like poisoned toads." Would the sun never go down? I was killing time as shamelessly as a plumber. To work again, and then another blister broke. I don't believe the stories they tell about two men cutting eight cords of wood in a day with a crosscut saw.

As the dragging minutes passed I began to sympathise with Sisyphus, who had to roll a stone uphill, only to find that it always rolled back. No matter how savagely I yanked that saw towards me, it would be yanked away. As I kept up the dreary task I began to admire Schopenhauer, and decided that henceforth I would be an outspoken pessimist. Still the saw whimpered—

"Tang, Tan-n-n-n-g!"

At last, when "even despair grew mild," I was told the time had come to do chores. Without a word I shambled towards home and, like Hosea Biglow, I went

"Back

Along the very feetmarks of my shining morning track."

Also like Hosea, I was

"Forlorner nor a musquash if you took and dreened his swamp."

When I reached the house I picked out the kindest-looking chair I could find and fell into it. I don't believe we shall need any more summer wood. Besides, after such a steady winter, we are almost sure to have a hot summer.

Jan. 7.—That fool weasel or ermine was in the trap this morning. You needn't tell me that they are cunning or anything of that sort. By the way, working a crosscut saw isn't nearly so bad a job on the second day. One can get used to anything.

Jan. 11.—My move, is it? Where did you move? Oh!—well, why didn't you say so? I've been waiting for you to move for the past week.

A checker epidemic is now raging in the country. It is affecting people in much the same way as tarantism, or the dancing sickness, affected the Italians in the middle ages. We speak the language of checkers, act the actions of checkers, and even in our sleep we try to make moves on the patchwork quilts. When the boys go to do the chores they jump the swill-buckets over the pigs, and when the girls make pancakes they jump them around the pan instead of turning them. The storekeepers jump the pennies over the quarters when making change, and the bakers jump the buns with the cookies when filling orders. Even the snowflakes seem to be jumping one another as they fall, and then they drift in zigzags towards some mysterious king-row beyond the horizon. The present state of the public mind is shown by the following clipping from the Appin news of The Glencoe Transcript:—"Ed. Laughton and John McMaster have chosen sides for another checker match. Each side has thirteen players, and over 500 games must be played in the next two weeks. The losers must provide an oyster supper and concert in the Town Hall. Every available space in town is covered by a checkerboard."

The outbreak is by no means local. This week some one sent me a copy of The Grimsby Independent, and marked a letter which overflows with Gargantuan mirth and Homeric defiance. It is humorous to the point of libel:—