Country and City 85 



Where is the fiction that portrays the farmer 

 without overdrawing or caricaturing him ? 

 Where are the candid and interesting farm 

 sketches ? The farm poems ? The writing 

 that will do for the farm what has been done 

 to interest persons in nature ? 



A good technical agricultural literature is now 

 developing, and this is certain to be followed 

 by a new range of artistic writing. It is aston- 

 ishing how utterly agricultural experience has 

 been neglected in literature. Great movements 

 have come and gone, ideas of wide sweep have 

 risen and passed away, unconscious experiments 

 of continental area have been made, industries 

 have developed and have disappeared, discus- 

 sions on burning questions have caught from 

 schoolhouse to schoolhouse, customs have died 

 out, inventions have been forgotten, systems of 

 farming have been outlived, books have been 

 written to be stored in old attics, strong men 

 have lived and died, and yet all these treasures 

 of human experience are unknown to the 

 writers and the historians. 



I never look over my shelves of old agricul- 



