they spend more strength in pullin agin each other, than in pullin the load.  Well that’s apt to be the case with them as choose their wives in sleighin parties, quiltin frolicks, and so on; instead of the dairies, looms, and cheese house.  Now the Blue Noses are all a stirrin in winter.  The young folks drive out the galls, and talk love and all sorts of things as sweet as dough-nuts.  The old folks find it near about as well to leave the old women to home, for fear they should’nt keep tune together; so they drive out alone to chat about House of Assembly with their neighbors, while the boys and hired helps do the chores.  When the Spring comes, and the fields are dry enough to be sowed, they all have to be plowed, cause fall rains wash the lands too much for fall PLOUGHIN.  Well the plows have to be mended and sharpened, cause what’s the use of doin that afore its wanted. Well the wheat gets in too late, and then comes rust, but whose fault is that?  Why the climate to be sure, for Nova Scotia aint A bread country.

When a man has to run ever so far as fast as he can clip, he has to stop and take breath; you must do that or choke.  So it is with a horse; run him a mile, and his flanks will heave like a Blacksmith’s bellows; you must slack up the rein and give him a little wind, or he’ll fall right down with you.  It stands to reason, don’t it?  Atwixt spring and fall work is “Blowin time.”  Then Courts come on, and Grand Jury business, and Militia trainin, and Race trainin, and what not; and a fine spell of ridin about and doin nothin, a real “Blowin time.”  Then comes harvest, and that is proper hard work, mowin and pitchin hay, and reapin and bindin grain, and potatoe diggin.  That’s as hard as sole leather, afore its hammered on the lap stone—­it’s most next to any thing.  It takes a feller as tuff as Old Hickory (General Jackson) to stand that.

Ohio is most the only country I knew of where folks are saved that trouble; and there the freshets come jist in the nick of time for ’em, and sweep all the crops right up in a heap for ’em, and they have nothin to do but take it home and house it, and sometimes a man gets more than his own crop, and finds a proper swad of it all ready piled up, only a little wet or so; but all countries aint like Ohio.  Well, arter harvest comes fall, and then there’s a grand “blowin time” till spring.  Now, how the Lord the Blue Noses can complain of their country, when its only one third work and two-thirds “blowin time,” no soul can tell.  Father used to say, when I lived on the farm along with him—­Sam, says he, I vow I wish there was jist four hundred days in the year, for its a plaguy sight too short for me.  I can find as much work as all hands on us can do