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Tale of Frisky Squirrel

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<h2>XVIII</h2><h3>The Threshing-machine</h3></div> <p>One day, late in the summer, Frisky Squirrel saw something that caused him great excitement. Right into the center of one of Farmer Green’s fields he saw Farmer Green’s horses drag a queer sort of wagon. It was bigger than any other wagon he had ever seen, and had wheels upon it in all sorts of strange places, instead of just at the four corners, like all the wagons he had ever noticed before.</p> <p>Frisky climbed a tree, in order to get a better view of what was happening. As he watched, he saw still another odd wagon hauled upon the field alongside the first one. This wagon carried a broad<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name='Page_87' id='Page_87'>[Pg 87]</SPAN></span> walk which led from the back and went right up what you might call a hill, to the front of the wagon. And there it stopped, with a wooden bar blocking the way. Frisky Squirrel thought that that was the strangest path he had ever seen, for it seemed to lead to nowhere, and why it should have a bar at the top, to keep anyone from going nowhere at all, was more than even his lively mind could puzzle out.</p> <p>In and out and about these strange wagons were as many as a dozen men, and one boy—each of them as busy as he could be. And as for the boy, Johnnie Green, he was busier than anybody else. He seemed to be everywhere at once, and in everybody’s way. And Frisky couldn’t see that he was doing anything at all. But he noticed that Johnnie appeared to be having a fine time.<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name='Page_88' id='Page_88'>[Pg 88]</SPAN></span></p> <p>As Frisky Squirrel looked down upon this unusual sight from his perch in the tree he saw that Farmer Green’s wagons—the kind Frisky had often seen before—were bringing up sheaves of wheat. And pretty soon—and this made Frisky’s eyes almost pop out of his head—he saw a man lead a pair of horses up that short, steep walk and tie them to the bar at the top of it.</p> <p>Then the horses began to walk. Now, probably you wouldn’t think there was anything strange about that. But there was. The odd thing about that was that although the horses walked, they didn’t get anywhere at all. So far as Frisky Squirrel could see, they just walked and walked, and that was all there was to it. After they had walked for a long time they still stayed right in the same place, tied fast to the wooden bar in front of them.<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name='Page_89' id='Page_89'>[Pg 89]</SPAN></span></p> <p>Now, when the horses were walking, the other wagon began to set up a great noise. It reminded Frisky of the time the gristmill began to grind, when he thought the world was coming to an end. Those queer wheels on the wagon began to turn, too. But Frisky didn’t pay much attention to them. What caught his eye and kept him puzzling was those two horses, always walking, but never going anywhere.</p> <p>Frisky Squirrel stayed in his tree as long as he could, until at last he simply had to hurry home and beg his mother to come over to the field with him.</p> <p>As it happened, Mrs. Squirrel was not very busy that day, so she dropped her knitting, or whatever it was that she was doing, and pretty soon she and Frisky were up in the tree that he had climbed before.</p> <p>“Oh! they’re threshing!” Mrs. Squirrel<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name='Page_90' id='Page_90'>[Pg 90]</SPAN></span> said, after she had taken one good look at what was going on. “They’re threshing out the wheat-kernels, so the miller can grind them into flour.”</p> <p>“But those horses—” said Frisky. “Why is it that they don’t walk right against that bar, and break it, and tumble off onto the ground?”</p> <p>“That’s a horse-power,” Mrs. Squirrel explained. “The path the horses are treading on moves, and that’s why they stay right in the same place. The path moves ’round and ’round all the time, like a broad chain. That’s what makes the wheels turn on the threshing-machine.”</p> <p>“It must be fun,” said Frisky Squirrel. “I wish I could be a horse, and make that horse-power turn like that.”</p> <p>“Nonsense!” said his mother. “You’d soon grow tired of it.”</p> <p>But Frisky Squirrel knew better.</p> <div class='figcenter' style='width: 300px; padding-top: 1em; padding-bottom: 1em;'> <SPAN name='illus-034' id='illus-034'></SPAN> <ANTIMG src='images/illus-067.png' alt='' title='' /><br/> <span class='caption'>Caught in the attic</span></div> <hr class='major' /> <div class='figcenter' style='width: 300px; padding-top: 1em; padding-bottom: 1em;'> <SPAN name='illus-035' id='illus-035'></SPAN> <ANTIMG src='images/illus-069.png' alt='300' title='' /><br/></div> <div style='margin: auto; text-align: center; padding-top: 1em; padding-bottom: 1em;'> <SPAN name='XIX' id='XIX'></SPAN> <span class="pagenum"><SPAN name='Page_91' id='Page_91'>[Pg 91]</SPAN></span> <div style="break-after:column;"></div><br />

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