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 isa 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- 
259 
