30 HOW TO LIVE IN THE COUNTRY 



his chances mend. He should not be very far from 

 a quick transit, for he is liable to oversleep or lose 

 a few minutes from his dinner hour. 



Here he can have his garden and a few fruit trees 

 and such associations with Nature as will keep him 

 alert. He should discover the morning and see the 

 sun rise every day of the summer. I said to one of 

 this sort the other day that I believed one hour of 

 the morning was worth three or four of any other 

 time of day, and that daybreak was the most delight- 

 ful of all times. 



" So they tell me," he coolly responded. This sort 

 of chap, who at forty has never seen the sunrise, cer- 

 tainly not since his childhood, has no place in the 

 country. Yet I should like very much to encourage 

 the clerks of our big towns to an ambition outside of 

 a counter-bound and enfeebling effort to sell a corset 

 or a line of toweling. Why not grow cabbages like 

 the Emperor Diocletian? 



Ministers I sympathize with am one myself 

 and I see no reason why a minister should lose his 

 vitality and become a dried-up parson, unfit for the 

 pulpit, at sixty. If he will live close to Nature, he 

 may be young at eighty and more virile than at forty. 

 We have heard a good deal about old age, but no- 

 body yet has told us what it is. I am inclined to 

 think it is a mere habit that people have fallen into 

 and are not yet quite ready to shake it off. 



Our professional men may have country homes 

 quite as well as our day laborers and merchants, pro- 



