Is this “Paternalism”? If so, please don’t mention it to the mossback whom we have described. It might make him run away and tear the buggy up. _Planting Corn_ The bluebird was out today; out in his glossiest plumage, his throat gurgling with song. For the sunlight was warm and radiant in all the South, and the coming spring had laid its benediction on every field and hedge and forest. The smell of newly plowed ground mingled with the subtle incense of the yellow jasmine; and from every orchard a shower of the blossoms of peach and apple and pear was wafted into the yard and hung lovingly on the eaves and in the piazzas of the old homestead—the old and faded homestead. Was there a cloud in all the sky? Not one, not one. “Gee! Mule!!!” “Dad blast your hide, why don’t you gee-e-EE!!” Co-whack! goes the plowline on the back of the patient mule—the dignified upholder of mortgages, “time price” accounts, and the family credit generally. Down the furrow, and up the furrow; down to the woods, and up to the fence—there they go, the sturdy plowman and his much-enduring but indispensable mule. For the poplar leaves are now as big as squirrel-ears and it’s “time to plant corn.” On moves the plowman, steady as a clock, silent and reflective. Right after him comes the corndropper, dropping corn. The grains faintly chink as the bare feet of the corndropper hurry past; and before the corn has well cuddled itself into the shoe-heel of the plowman’s track, down comes the hoe of the “coverer”—and then the seeds pass into the portals of the great unknown; the unknown of burial, of death and of life renewed. Peeping from the thicket, near at hand, the royal redbird makes note of what is going on, nor is the thrush blind to the progress of the corndropper. And seated with calm but watchful dignity on the highest pine in the thicket sits the melancholy crow, sharpening his appetite with all the anticipated pleasures of simple larceny. The mocking-bird circles and swoops from tree to tree, and in her matchless bursts of varied song no cadence is wanting, no melody missed. The hum of the bees is in the air; white butterflies, like snowflakes, fall down the light and lazily float away. The robin lingers about the China tree, and the bluejay, lifting his plumed frontlet, picks a quarrel with every feathered acquaintance and noisily asserts his grievances. The jo-ree has dived deeper into the thicket, and the festive sapsucker, he of the scarlet crest, begins to come to the front, inquisitive as to the location of bugs and worms. On such a day, such a cloudless, radiant, flower-sweetened day, the horseman slackens the rein as he rides through lanes and quiet fields; and he dares to dream that the children of God once loved each other. On such a day one may dream that the time might come when they would do so again.