A JOURNEY TO NATURE 



clustered in pretty tableaux, like Dryads on the 

 top of a heavily loaded wain, with their rakes on 

 their shoulders. I think if you had asked me 

 at any time in Wall Street what was the special 

 feature of haying, I would have answered, &quot; Why, 

 the nooning, of course, under the hedge tree, 

 where the lusty farmers drink .their switchel out 

 of a jug, and c chomp their home-made bread 

 and home-cured ham in voracious innocence, 

 while the kindly animals look on with idyllic 

 composure.&quot; 



That such a picture is not in strict accordance 

 with the facts, I have now to state very solemnly. 

 Beside a twenty acres hay-field of ripe timothy, 

 the Staked Plains have many advantages to the 

 luxuriant observer. But I am bound in honesty 

 to declare, from actual experience, that the work 

 in such a field has certain subtle compensations. 

 It does not drain the vital economy of a man 

 like a fifteen minutes walk on lower Broadway 

 in the middle of the day. In fact, I have known 

 stalwart girls in New York who exhausted more 

 fibre in one evening doing nothing, than they 

 possibly could have lost had they driven that 

 raker all day and earned their porridge with the 

 sweat of their marble brows. 



One other thing I learned, and it was that in 

 a hay-field all conformities and considerations of 

 rules of life vanish. The one thing to do is to 

 get the hay in before it gets wet. Dinner-hour, 

 breathing-time, and all the amenities of life are 

 suspended till the job is done. No one is think- 



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