Farm Machinery

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Title:     Farm Machinery
Author: Walt Mason [More Titles by Mason]

We have things with cogs and pulleys that will stack and bale the hay, we have scarecrows automatic that will drive the crows away; we have riding cultivators, so we may recline at ease, as we travel up the corn rows, to the tune of haws and gees; we have engines pumping water, running churns and grinding corn, and one farmer that I know of has a big steam dinner horn; all of which is very pleasant to reflect upon, I think, but we need a good contrivance that will teach the calves to drink.

Now, as in the days of Noah, man must take a massive pail, loaded up with milk denatured, with a dash of Adam's ale, and go down among the calfkins as the lion tamer goes 'mong the monarchs of the jungle, at the famous three-ring shows; and the calves are fierce and hungry, and they haven't sense to wait, till he gets a good position and has got his bucket straight; and they act as though they hadn't e'en a glimmering of sense, for they climb upon his shoulders ere he is inside the fence, and they butt him in the stomach, and they kick him everywhere, till he thinks he'd give a nickel for a decent chance to swear; then they all get underneath him and capsize him in the mud, and the milk runs down his whiskers and his garments in a flood, and you really ought to see him when he goes back to his home quoting divers pagan authors and the bards of ancient Rome. And he murmurs while he's washing mud off at the kitchen sink: "What we need is a contraption that will teach the calves to drink!"

We've machinery for planting, we've machines to reap and thrash, and the housewife has an engine that will grind up meat for hash; we've machines to do our washing and to wring the laundered duds, we've machines for making cider and to dig the Burbank spuds; all about the modern farmstead you may hear the levers clink, but we're shy of a contrivance that will teach the calves to drink!

[The end]
Walt Mason's poem: Farm Machinery

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