THE SUMMIT OF THE YEARS 



I sympathize with Whitman as he expressed him- 

 self in these lines : 



"I think I could turn "and live with the animals, they are so 



placid and self-contain'd. 

 I stand and look at them, long and long. 



"They do not sweat and whine about their condition, 

 They do not lie awake in the dark and weep for their sins, 

 They do not make me sick discussing their duty to God. 

 Not one is dissatisfied, not one is demented with the mania of 



owning things, 

 Not one kneels to another, nor to his kind that lived thousands 



of years ago, 

 Not one is respectable or happy over the whole earth." 



Ill 



If one has a bit of the farmer in him, it is a 

 pleasure in the country to have a real farmer for a 

 neighbor a man whose heart is in his work, who 

 is not longing for the town or the city, who improves 

 his fields, who makes two spears of grass grow where 

 none grew before, whose whole farm has an atmo- 

 sphere of thrift and well-being. There are so many 

 reluctant, half-hearted farmers in our Eastern 

 States nowadays, so many who do only what they 

 have to do in order to survive; who leave the pater- 

 nal acres to run to weeds or brush; the paternal 

 fences to fall into ruins; the paternal orchards 

 untrimmed and unploughed; the paternal meadows 

 unfertilized, while the fertilizer wastes in the barn- 

 yard; who get but one spear of grass where their 

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