August 



fields of waving grain, the smell of new-mown 

 hay, the running brook, the hills and plains, 

 where one hears at intervals the lowing of the 

 herd and the hum of insects, 



"And merry larks are ploughmen's clocks," 



— in these daily associations, and with the qui- 

 etness brooding over a farmer's life, what can 

 there be to contract his sympathies, shorten 

 his outlook, and harden him to all the finer in- 

 fluences of nature ? 



An eminent English writer somewhat dispar- 

 ages this class of laborers, in alluding to " the 

 honesty and the narrow-mindedness of the agri- 

 culturalists. " It is a little anomalous that sound 

 morals and narrow minds should develop out of 

 the same soil, like the self-same fountain send- 

 ing forth sweet water and bitter. It would be 

 unreasonable to expect that, without special in- 

 tellectual training, this honorable class of peo- 

 ple would in any systematic manner, and in a 

 scientific spirit, contemplate the objects and 

 operations of nature. But it would seem as if 

 there might be a peculiar responsiveness to 

 those influences that come, not through books 

 and technical training, but absorbed impercep- 

 tibly from a permanently surrounding atmos- 



239 



