Down on the Farm

ACRES AND PAINS (126 pp.)--S. J. Perelman--Reynal & Hitchcock ($2).

The auctioneer's voice boomed out the cow's pedigree: "ZangwilPs Bijou Lass, the daughter of Throaty Contralto by that great sire Glittering Generalization." The bidding stopped at $320. "Before I could extricate myself," writes Sidney Joseph Perelman, "the auctioneer had brought me to my knees and was administering the estocada. In vain I pleaded that I had merely been clearing my throat, that I lived in a hotel for business girls where no cattle were permitted. . . ."

That day Humorist Perelman acquired not only Bijou Lass but two other cows to keep her company. When they arrived at Rising Gorge, his Bucks County (Pa.) farm, his wife took one look and turned a "dusty vermilion." He started to explain, "but the poor creature, irrational as only her sex can be, caught up a nest of flowerpots and was trying to get my range. I spent the night doubled up in a feed bin, listening to the mammoths eating me into bankruptcy. ... To date, they have tucked away twelve bales of hay, five blocks of salt and three bushels of a mealy substance weighed out on jewelers' scales. With reasonable economy, every glass of milk I throw a lip over next season should cost in the vicinity of $40."

Perelman was a pioneer in the Broadway-to-Bucks-County rush which has filled the county's farmhouses with highbrow yeomen, including Moss Hart, Dorothy Parker and Pearl Buck. Acres and Pains, made up of 21 pieces originally published in magazines, deals sharply with such rural hazards as weekend guests, domestic animals, tractors and antiques ("Is anybody around here looking for a bargain in an Early Pennsylvania washstand? . . . Genuine pumpkin pine, with ball-and-claw feet, and a small smear of blood where I tripped over it last night in the dark"). Unlike some other city farmers, Perelman can make a profit out of the country--by writing about it.

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