Book Description:
Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER III. The Com Planting Bee. Plauterkill Clove, May. The people who inhabit that section of country lying between the Catskill Mountains and the Hudson River, are undoubtedly the legitimate descendants of the far famed Rip Van Winkle. Dutch blood floweth in their veins, and their names, appearance, manners, are all Dutch, and Dutch only. The majority of them are engaged in tilling the soil, and as they seem to be satisfied with a bare competency, the peace fulness of their lives is only equalled by their ignorance of books and the world at large. The height of their ambition is to enjoy a frolic, and what civilized people understand by that term, they designate a Bee. Not only have they their wedding and funeral bees, but they commemorate their agricultural labors with a bee, and of these the corn planting bee, which I am about to describe, is a specimen. A certain old Dutchman of my acquaintance had so long neglected the field where he intended to plant his corn, that he found it necessary to retrieve his reputation by getting up a bee. He therefore immediately issued his invitations, and at two o'clock on the appointed day, about seventy of his neighbors, including men and women, made their appearance at his dwelling, each one of them furnished with a hoeand a small bag to carry the seed. After supplying his guests with all they wanted in the way of spiritual drink, my friend gave the signal, and shouldering a large hoe, started off for the field of action, closely followed by his neighbors, who fell to work quite lustily. The field was large, but as the laborers were numerous, it was entirely planted at least two hours before sunset, when the party was disbanded, with the express understanding resting upon their minds that they should invite their children to...
|
