We learned at supper that Addison and the old Squire, having little to
do that day except watch the weather, had put their heads together and
hatched a plan to make hay from freshly mown grass without the aid of
the sun. I have always understood that the plan originated in something
that Addison had read, or in some picture that he had seen in one of the
magazines in the garret. But the old Squire, who had a spice of Yankee
inventiveness in him, had improved on Addison's first notion by
suggesting a glass roof, set aslant to a south exposure, so as to
utilize the rays of the sun when it did shine.
The haymaker was simply a long shed built against the south side of the
barn. The front and the ends were boarded up to a height of eight feet
from the ground. At that height strong cedar cross poles were laid, six
inches apart, so as to form a kind of rack, on which the freshly mown
grass could be pitched from a cart.
The glass roof was put on as soon as the glass arrived; it slanted at an
angle of perhaps forty degrees from the front of the shed up to the
eaves of the barn. The rafters, which were twenty-six feet in length,
were hemlock scantlings eight inches wide and two inches thick, set
edgewise; the panes of glass, which were eighteen inches wide by
twenty-four inches long, were laid in rows upon the rafters like
shingles.
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