Light, strong, durable Canadian harness is not to his mind, for he recollects seeing the plough horses in England return from the fields with great broad back-bands on their harness, to which were attached immense iron chains of traces, and he follows suit. And he sets John to ploughing, properly equipped, not for a moment doubting the result of all this preparation. And after a proper method of ploughing he does raise fair crops as a rule, for our lands are ordinarily so rich that if they have even a fair show at all they will produce. Harvest-time coming on, many other hands are brought into requisition, and he follows up the old time-honored custom in England of serving up the quart of beer per day to each hand. In due time his harvest is all garnered properly, and his work nicely done. His man comes in in the morning and tells him, about the time the first few rains come on, that “one of the sheep is sick.” “All right, John, I will attend to it,” for, of course, he can, for he knows he has at his elbow, upon the shelf, somebody’s treatise on the sheep, which is the best extant. The sheep volume is brought down and closely scanned, and the right page describing the disease sheep ought to have at this time of the year found. With the volume under arm he sallies forth to view the sheep, while John follows with the remedies. Arrived at the sheep he adjusts his spectacles at the proper angle upon his nose, and intently examines his sick patient The more he examines his patient and gets at its symptoms the more he is in doubt if the symptoms really correspond with those mentioned on the particular page of the treatise.
Shoving the spectacles up just a little closer on his nose he re-examines his patient, and glances from the patient to the book, the quandary all the time deepening in his mind. John is not allowed to suggest that the sheep has caught cold by lying in some exposed place through the last storm, and that he only wants warmth and food. It would never do to give in to John, for “what has John read about sheep?” The proper remedy is at last hit upon. There can possibly be no doubt about it, but to make assurance doubly sure he re-reads the page and looks his patient over again. No doubt this time, and John is sent to the house for a bottle, from which he will administer the proper remedy internally. John returns with the bottle, with a little water in it, and our book farmer adds the proper remedy and shakes it up thoroughly. All being ready, John makes the poor sheep swallow the mixture, much against its will, for it’s the most noxious stuff it ever had in its life, and the book farmer quietly awaits the result, his spectacles gradually continuing to slip away from the bridge of his nose, and to run an imminent risk of falling off the extreme end of that important organ. Some twenty minutes now elapse and John says the sheep is worse.