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Winter Winds
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Great Blizzard
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The Coming of Spring
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Seeding
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Planting Corn
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Snaring Gophers
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Summer-Time—Herding the Cattle
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The Wild Meadows—Haying Time
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A Fourth of July Celebration
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Hired Men
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Lincoln's First Stack
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The Old-Fashioned Threshing
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Threshing in the Field
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The Corn Husking
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The Coming of the Circus
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A Camping Trip
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A Day in the Old-Time Harvest Field
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The Battle of the Bulls
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The Terror of the Rattlesnake
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Owen Rides at the County Fair
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A Chapter on Prairie Game
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Visiting Schools
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A Momentous Wolf-Hunt
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Lincoln Goes Away to School
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Conclusion
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Front Matter
Preface
This
book is the outgrowth of a series of articles
begun as far back as 1887. It was my intention, at the
time, to delineate the work and plans of a boy on a
prairie farm from season to season, beginning with
seeding and ending with threshing, and I wrote some six
or eight chapters in conformity with this plan. It
occurred to me then that twenty-seven was too young to
begin to write reminiscences, and I put the book aside
until such time as it might be seemly for me to say,
"I remember." I was resting easy in this attitude when a
friend startled me by saying, "Yes, that's right, put
it off till you have forgotten all about it!"
There was enough disturbing force in this remark to set
me at work. The life I intended to depict was passing.
The machinery of that day is already gone. The methods
of haying, harvesting, threshing, are quite changed,
and the boys of my generation are already middle-aged
men with poor memories; therefore I have taken a slice
out of the year 1899 in order to put into shape my
recollection of the life we led in northern Iowa thirty
years ago. I trust the reader will permit my assumption
of the airs of an old man for a single volume.
At the same time let me say, "Boy Life on the Prairie"
is not an autobiography. It is not my intention to
present in Lincoln Stewart the details of my own life
and character, though I lived substantially the life of
the boys herein depicted. I have used Lincoln merely as
a connecting life-thread to bind the chapters together.
Rance is the hero of the book, so far as any character
can by courtesy be so called.
I ploughed and sowed, bound grain on a station, herded
cattle, speared fish, hunted prairie chickens, and
killed rattlesnakes quite in the manner here set down,
but I have been limited neither by the actualities of
my own life, nor those of any other personality. All of
the incidents happened neither to me nor to Rance, but
they were the experiences of other boys, and might have
been mine. They are all typical of the time and place.
In short, I have aimed to depict boy life, not boys;
the characterization is incidental. Lincoln and Rance
and Milton and Owen are to be taken as types rather
than as individuals. The book is as faithful and as
accurate as my memory and literary skill can make it. I
hope it may prove sufficiently appealing to the men of
my generation to enable them to relive with me the
splendid days of the unbroken prairie-lands of northern
Iowa.
Prologue
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The ancient minstrel when time befit
And his song outran his laggard pen,
Went forth on the mart and chanted it
In the noisy street to the busy men,
Who found full leisure to listen and long
For the far-off land of the singer's song.
Let me play minstrel, and chant the lines
Which rise in my heart in praise of the plain;
I'll lead you where the wild-oat shines,
And swift clouds dapple the wheat with rain.
If you'll listen, you'll hear the songs of birds,
And the shuddering roar of trampling herds.
The brave brown lark from the russet sod
Will pipe as clear as a cunning flute,
Though sky and cloud are stern as God,
And all things else are hot and mute—
Though the gulls complain of the blazing air
And the grass is brown and crisp as hair.
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