TAKING REINS IN HAND. . 81 



&quot; uoat,&quot; he will not prove the Arcadian companion at 

 dinner, which readers of Somerville imagine, neither 

 on the score of conversation, or of transpiration. 

 Active, every-day farm labor is certainly not congru 

 01 is with a great many of those cleanly prejudices 

 which grow out of the refinements of civilization. 

 We must face the bald truth in this matter ; a man 

 who has only an hour to his nooning, will not squan 

 der it upon toilet labors ; and a long day of close 

 field-work leaves one in very unfit mood for apprecia 

 tive study of either poetry or the natural sciences. 



The pastoral idea, set off with fancies of earth 

 en bowls, tables under trees, and appetites that are 

 sated with bread and milk, or crushed berries and 

 sugar, and with the kindred fancies of rural swains, 

 w r ho can do a good day s work and keep their linen 

 clean, is all a most wretched phantasm. Pork, and 

 cabbage, and dirty wristbands, are the facts. 



Plainly, the milkmaids must have a home to them- 

 eelves, where no dreary etiquette shall oppress them. 

 This home, which is properly the farmer s, lies some 

 eighth of a mile southward, upon the same highway 

 that passes my door. For a few rods the road keeps 

 upon a gravelly ridge, from which, eastward, stretches 

 away the wide-reaching view I have already rioted ; 

 and westward, in as full sight, is the little valley 

 lawn, where the shadows of the copses lie splintered 

 4* 



