312 FIELD AND HEDGEROW. 



first wild violets came. You might look along miles of 

 hedgerow, but there were never any until they had 

 shown by John Brown's. 



If a man's work that he has done all the days of his 

 life could be collected and piled up around him in 

 visible shape, what a vast mound there would be beside 

 some ! If each act or stroke was represented, say by a 

 brick, John Brown would have stood the day before his 

 ending by the side of a monument as high as a pyramid. 

 Then if in front of him could be placed the sum and 

 product of his labour, the profit to himself, he could 

 have held it in his clenched hand like a nut, and no one 

 would have seen it. Our modern people think they 

 train their sons to strength by football and rowing and 

 jumping, and what are called athletic exercises ; all of 

 which it is the fashion now to preach as very noble, and 

 likely to lead to the goodness of the race. Certainly 

 feats are accomplished and records are beaten, but there 

 is no real strength gained, no hardihood built up. 

 Without hardihood it is of little avail to be able to jump 

 an inch farther than somebody else. Hardihood is the 

 true test, hardihood is the ideal, and not these caperings 

 or ten minutes' spurts. 



Now, the way they made the boy John Brown hardy 

 was to let him roll about on the ground with naked 

 legs and bare head from morn till night, from June till 

 December, from January till June. The rain fell on his 

 head, and he played in wet grass to his knees. Dry 

 bread and a little lard was his chief food. He went to 

 work while he was still a child. At half-past three in the 

 morning he was on his way to the farm stables, there to 

 help feed the cart-horses, which used to be done with 

 great care very early in the morning. The carter's whip 

 used to sting his legs, and sometimes he felt the butt. At 



