A LOVER OF THE LAND 253 



even at the cost of forsaking the ancestral acres; 

 but the lure of the land, an heritage perhaps from 

 his soil-loving parents, saved him from what would 

 have been to one of his tastes a fatal error. Some 

 people have said he was lacking in ambition and 

 enterprise. Well, perhaps that was true in a way. 

 He did not possess that overflowing vitality and 

 restlessness that make a man "get up and go" 

 in spite of all obstacles. To him the eternal mys- 

 tery of the variation of animals and plants was a 

 world close at hand well worth exploring. He may 

 have been something of a dreamer. If close com- 

 munion with nature in field, garden, forest or paddock 

 is idling, he spent hours which others might have 

 passed more actively, but not perhaps in the end 

 more profitably. He was wedded to the old home; 

 to his own vine and fig tree; to the wonders wrought 

 by the subtle alchemy of the elements; to the tran- 

 quil beauty of the star-lit night; to the glory of 

 the sunset and the dawn; to the roar of the wind 

 through the noble woods of Island Grove; to the 

 pageantry of the passing storm a man of sentiment 

 as well as sense. 



WILLIAM BROWN often bewailed the fact that corn- 

 state farmers did not breed more good cattle. As 

 high as eight hundred to one thousand head of bul- 



