The melancholy days have come the saddest of the year. The air is wet and heavy on these short, gray, bleak days and the men shiver in their sheepskin coats. We are all burdened with the somber spirit expressed in the well-known lines "The ivy clings to the moldering wall, and at every gust, the dead leaves fall." even though our walls are far too few to molder and the ivy, alas, has never condescended to cling, though I have struggled all summer with it, coaxing propping, almost leaning upon it, doing everything but paste it up with adhesive tape
But mentally we have those gorgeous golden days, so typical of our prairie autumn, neither warm nor cold. The white frost lies heavy in the shadows until noon when the rising sun has crept up on it inperceptibly and enforced it to slink away. By midday, the air is almost balmy, and we have a few brilliant hours, set like a jewel between chill and chill. Suddenly the sun sets, the wind comes up raw, and, without twilight, we have night.
"Go by the pretty road." the children beg when we start to town, and so we wind through timber-land on the crooked old pioneer pathway, reveling in the masses of flaunting color in the groves of walnut, hickory, and maple
Is a Busy Season
It is a busy season. The two months of rain have jammed all the fall work together into these short weeks. Threshing was barely finished by election day. Lots of folks are wanting to shell corn in order to have room for the new crop. Others still have silos to fill and beans to thresh. It is hard to find help enough to man all the crews wanted. Occasionally a little shower throws all the plans askew. Perhaps we have planned to threat thresh beans in the morning to be out of the way of a neighbor who wants to shell corn in the afternoon, to be out of the way of a neighbor who wants to fill silo the next day. Every one goes to bed serene in the belief that two days are well planned. Toward morning, everyone is awakened by a general persistent, dripping, and we find that there is just enough rain to spoil the threshing and no one is quite ready to fill silo or shell corn so there is great scurrying by everyone to put in the morning profitably and locate enough help for the afternoon
At our house, it is elected to grind feed for the cows. At a quarter to 10 the head of the house dashes in. "Can we have dinner at 11? they'll be two extra men. And I wish you would call so-and-so for threshing help right after dinner and if you could make it, I guess you'll have to get in the car and go tell such-and-such since they have no phone." And away he dashes to throw another bushel of corn into the grinder, leaving his humble servant feeling as though the house had tumbled around her ears
Has its Compensations
Oh these captains of industry with the authoritative ways! You know that luxurious feeling of leisure that comes over a housewife when she has expected to have to feed a threshing crew and finds she doesn't? Gone, all gone! Drop that pick up work you had hoped to do, stir up the fire, grab a paring knife, get dinner cooking, try the telephone, find the line busy, get in the car, dash up and down the road delivering messages, get back just in time to rescue the cake from charring, and by the skin of your teeth have dinner ready when the men arrive luckily 10 minutes late.
But after dinner there is an extra hour -- so what difference has it made? There is such a satisfaction and feeling that everyone has a part part in getting things done. Loaded racks rumble by and tractors putt putt in all directions near and far; some of them from threshing runs some from fields being plowed. It may be a melancholy time of year, but there are compensations in cheerful achievement and pleasant peace --Hope