INTRODUCTION. 



I sit to write this book just as spring comes timidly 

 sweeping over the land. Winter has been long and cold, 

 the naked cornfields are sodden, gullied with winter rains ; 

 there is no hint of life thereon. Wherever the plow held 

 sway last summer there is rueful countenance today. I 

 look out across wide stretches of meadow and pasture 

 land. There already the ground is covered with green- 

 ness, the tiny grass blades are pushing up, the clovers are 

 coming, too, the soil is alive, the field is a living thing, 

 robing itself with green. On the cornlands there has been 

 waste during winter. The rains have washed; the fer- 

 tility has leached away. Not so with the fields of grass 

 and clover ; they have more than held their own ; they are 

 richer, not poorer, for the lapse of time. 



Pastures feed mankind; they are the bedrock of civ- 

 ilization. From my window I see cows tranquilly graz- 

 ing the short, tender grass under the lee of the hill the 

 grass that the first sun has warmed and made sweet. 

 Those cows are the foster-mothers of the human race. 

 They are alchemists, transforming the green carpet of na- 

 ture into milk yellow with cream, food for mankind, 

 making sturdy limbs of childhood and brain, muscle and 

 endurance in man. Children love the wide pastures, the 

 sunny, grassy slopes. The largeness, freedom and sweet- 

 ness of the grassy outdoors build the child. The cow 

 comes homeward with swinging udder filled to nourish, 



(9) 



