Farm Raising.

Feilding Star, Volume XIX, Issue 5, 6 July 1897, Page 2

Farm Raising.

(By " Wanderer.") After giving up the unprofitable occupation of trjing to restore vitality to other people's addled eggs (for such I take bad debts to be) I turned my attention to farm raising, and to revel in the enjoyments of nature -that nature which poets delight so much to sing about. I bad read tbe lyrics of many of them and as I did so I used to wonder how people could be content to dwell in crowded towns when such felicity could be theirs. I don't now; those people knew more than I did. - I had taken up land and undoubtedly the land was there, bnt it lay forty feet deep beneath a covering of forest trees and scrub. To tear away such a garmeßt and explore the land in its nakeof • ness seemed the work of Hercules ; but 1 had an indomitable will and a decent suit of clothes, and determined to tame the wild and make the earth submissive to that will. Early and late I toiled. The first grey streak of dawn saw me emerging from my rude but, and it was not until night had drawn its curtain that I desisted from my daily labour. The bush fell fast before my exertions, so did my clothes, as piece by piece they left me to hang upon some twig or branch. I was rapidly assimilating with nature, and soon not a vestige of art would be discovered upon my person. I bad intended from the first to convert the flildernefS into an Eden, and after eight months of bard work I fancied it did begin to bear some similitude to that garden, inasmuch as there appeared upon it the figure of a man garbed as Adam, before the snake had ttiat conver sation with his rib ; but if in any other respect they bore any resemblanco to each other then my opinion is that Adam did not lose much when he got the writ of ejectment, and had to find a fresh abode for himself and bis bone ; and it is worthy of note that from the beginning it was woman's love of finery and ox travagancein dress that mined the bus band, for, if times wero no better then than they arc now, he could not afford such luxuries, especially as by that tinae doubtless (although we have no record of it) the Mongolian bad begun to run him in the disposal of his garden produce. But, to return. Tbe bush felling season had drawn to a close, the last tree had fallen, the last twig been cut, and I now stood amidst the dying and the dead, gazing with triumph upon the scene. As I surveyed my work ot spoliation a feeling of proud ex. hultancy filled my veins. £ then glanced at my clothes, and the sensation passed away. I inherit among other inconvenient virtues a large share of that modesty which my first parents had acquired, and I fancied my costume had strangely altered and was not now exactly tho one in which to appear in public— indeed had a female descendant of theirs appeared upon tbe scene just then I should have taken her to be, if not an ejecting, at least a rejecting, angel ; and I, like our parents of old, would have gone and bidden myself. Having been given to understand that naked I should go out of the world, I began to consider the advisableness of consulting a clothier with a view to retarding my departure, for as Christmas was drawing near I felt a desire once more to mix with my fellow man. I saw the clothier, but the clothes did not arrive as promised, and I was now only held to eartb by a single sock, and as the toe and heel of that had gone I felt that my hour of departure waa at hand, and I posted farewell letters to all my relatives, when my exit was arrested by tbe arrival of the wardrobe. But from that time my relations cut m« ; they say that I used them most shabbily in put ting them to an unnecessary expense for " Black," and a useless search for my body — and for my will 1