and cured leaf lay on the tables before them.
Each was armed with knives and cutters,
and we watched the quick transformation
of the flat leaves into the smooth and compact
cigars. The tobacco grown upon the
farm was, we discovered, only used as
wrappers for the cigars. The good farmer
imported, for the interior filling, a fine
tobacco from Havana. Strips and little
pieces of this the girls placed in the centre
of the cigar, wrapping the Connecticut
tobacco in wide strips tightly about it,
then pasting each of the last with some
paste in a pot by their side. It seemed to
be done almost in an instant; the Havana
slips were laid down, cut and trimmed, and
pressed into shape in a twinkling; the
wrappers were cut as quickly; and more
rapidly than I can describe it, the cigar
was made. These girls were mostly
daughters of neighbouring farmers, who
received so much per hundred cigars made;
intelligent, bright–eyed, and witty; many
of them comely, with rosy cheeks and
ruddy health: educated at the common
schools, and able, their day's work over,
to sit down at the piano and rattle away
ad infinitnm.

His stock of cigars thus made up, from
the first sowing to the last finishing touch,
the good squire (being, Yankee like, a sort
of Jack–of–all–trades), would have them put
up in gorgeously labelled boxes, carry them
to town, and sell them to retail dealers: not
disdaining himself, twice or thrice a year,
to go through the neighbouring States with
samples, and acting as his own commercial
traveller.

Once resolved to relinquish all idea of
amateur farming and experimental muscular
Christianity, and entering on a career
of pure pastime, we found plenty to do.
Farmer Standish's boys and girls were
fertile in expedients, and brought out all
the traditional country sports and
exercises they had inherited from the older
generations. It was just the season—
August—for picnics and long jaunts to the
famous sights of the neighbourhood. Busy
as the farmers were with their crops, their
full eared corn and their rich yellow wheat,
many an afternoon was found when the
boys and girls would be spared from the
fields, and gave up their whole energy to a
roystering, rollicking time. The announcement
of a picnic in the woods brought
plenty of recruits, who came abundantly
supplied with hampers of provisions, and
with spirits all alive to the keen pleasures
of the occasion. The girls would rise an
hour earlier than usual, so as to finish their
daily routine in time to cook the fowl, and
prepare the ham, and slice the sandwiches,
and make the apple and pumpkin pies;
while the boys, as soon as they could escape
from the harvest drudgery, hastened to the
wood, and cleared the picnic grove of the
rubbish which the storms and winds had
strewn about since the last feast there.
Afternoon arrived, the waggons came
rumbling up this road and that; the
horses were hitched under the farmer's
spacious carriage shed; and all hands, the
youths gallantly carrying the baskets on
one arm and the damsels on the other,
hastened, with many a laugh and song and
joke, to the spot of the day's merry–making.
Once there, little time was lost; these
sturdy souls, used so constantly to robust
day–long labour, appreciated to the utmost
the limited hours of a holiday when it
came. You should have seen the energy
which was thrown into the good old–tune
games: many of them inherited from the
"mother isle;" others born in Yankee
land itself! Now, all would huddle into a
close–ranked ring, and "Copenhagen,"
with its chasing, slapping, screaming,
kissing, and all, would be the order of the
moment; then, the party would sit on the
turfy ground, again in a ring, and the
"slipper," concealed from view, would
move mysteriously here and there, its
seeker dodging to secure it, but dodging
just too late; then "fortunes" would be
told, and " preferences" made, and
"characters" drawn, until some one, seeing the
games lag a little, and observing that the
more elderly damsels had not yet quite set
the table, would propose a race through the
woods, or a promenade by "couples" along
the deep–shaded romantic paths. The
rustic beaux and sweethearts would come
back from their little tête–à–têtes blushing
and confused somewhat, and quite fair
targets for the raillery of the rest; and in
the midst of it, all the party would hasten
to take places on the rather ricketty
benches: now well prepared to do justice to
the plenteous viands.

As the season advanced, and the wild
fruits ripened, parties were organised to
scour the woods and roam over the pastures
in search of them. All along the
edges of the roads, grew luxuriantly, the
large, luscious, creeping blackberry, free
for all to pluck who chose; the pastures
abounded with thick clumps of "huckleberry"
bushes; the swamps, with the high,
graceful bushes of the swamp "blueberry;"