Page:Robert Carter- his life and work. 1807-1889 (IA robertcarterhis00coch).pdf/37

Rh doubled my nieve [fist] to let him ken I was ready for him. Mair than a’ that, the puppy, he took out an orange to say that his country was a braw country, it could produce oranges. I took out a piece o’ cake to let him ken that the land o’ cakes was aye ready for his country, or else he needna be here.”

Robert Carter’s love for poetry was always very great. He became familiar with all the great poets, and learned his favorites by heart, and retained them through life, Gray’s Elegy he loved to repeat. Young, Burns, Scott, and Byron he quoted at great length, and even Homer and Virgil in their original tongues.

But to return to his own narrative:—

“From a very early age the harvest was a season of hard labor. When not more than six or seven years old, I accompanied my elder brother to the harvest to glean behind the reapers. To pick up, one by one, the golden ears of wheat or barley or oats till our little hands were full, and then to bind up the handful and lay it aside, and commence again and again till the close of the day, with the back continually bowed down till it was almost like to break, was no easy task. And in the evening to carry home the fruits of the day’s labor, sometimes a distance of one or two miles, required no small effort. Glad were we, worn out and weary, to sit down to our evening dish of oatmeal porridge and milk, and feel that our task for the day was done. During harvest I had no opportunity for reading. If I attempted to take a book in the evening, I invariably fell asleep. So that there was in each year a dreary blank which was worse than lost.

“As soon as I was able to wield a sickle, I became a reaper. At first, I could only do half duty, so that two of us stood for one. This work was to me extremely