Ranch Life 125 



Slope, upon a rich and generous soil, ought to be 

 a life worth living. 



" The secret lore of rural things. 

 The moral of each fleeting cloud and gale, 

 The whispers from above that haunt the twilight vale." 



These to me have inexpressible charm, a charm the 

 greater perhaps because they may not be lightly 

 apprehended. To the farmer whose heart is in his 

 work, there may, there must come many trials and 

 disappointments, for he is the plaything of the 

 elements, the victim of laws that he cannot con- 

 trol; but there will come also, in the fulness of 

 time, the harvest, the golden sheaves that a man 

 can take with him when he dies. To the farmer 

 in the West whose heart is not in his work, I can 

 only say that it were better for him if he had 

 never been born. 



For the seamy side is there: rough, encrusted 

 with frustrated hopes, scored by many harsh lines, 

 like the faces of the women who work too hard. 

 Always you are haunted by the sullen spectre of 

 a dry year, the dry year that comes, it is true, 

 only once in twenty years, and leaves when it 

 does come the hearts of the farmers as colourless 

 and arid as the brown, bleak hills which encom- 

 pass them. In some years, too, the rain falls capri- 

 ciously, bringing plenty and prosperity to one, to 

 another want and misery. I have stood day after 

 day watching the green spears of wheat as they 

 turned sere and yellow, bending at last in abject 

 supplication for the moisture that came not; and 

 I have seen, how often ! the blight and wire worms 



