314 AROUND AN OLD HOMESTEAD. 



Every experience in Nature is worth something. 

 I like to observe the methods of Nature, and to follow 

 them in my farming. Nature is a great teacher. She 

 invites us to her complicity, to be in league with her. 

 If we take an exotic and bring it to our country, we 

 shall have to study artificial surroundings for it, and 

 not leave it to the ways of Nature here ; but in the case 

 of native plants and trees we shall find it best to leave 

 them to Nature's keeping, or at least to prune and 

 protect them according to Nature's evident intentions. 

 It is from Nature that we learn to mulch our shrubs 

 and berries, and the value of leaf litter for soil enrich- 

 ment; for the wind blows the falling leaves of autumn 

 everywhither, till they lodge about the thorns or the 

 lower network of the shrub, caught by design in the 

 thicket for its wintry protection, or are left to strew 

 the forest floor for future generations, or to stray to 

 the outlying fields beyond. 



I can not sympathize with that view of life which 

 would sell the old homesteads or see old landmarks 

 brought low. It is only the materialistic spirit which 

 will drive surveyors' stakes through a woods. The 

 country is God's home. Why not ours? Yet men, in 

 their impertinence, must needs have luxurious living; 

 and exist, as it were, apart from Nature, separate from 

 it, not enjoying it. But the old nomadic life is the 

 most natural, after all, like the gypsies', with the stars 

 above and a bed of greensward. I envied that gypsy 

 queen I read of who had never yet slept under a roof, 

 and who said she would feel unnatural and smothered 

 to be deprived of the sight of the stars from her pillow. 

 Hosea, the Hebrew prophet, gave a picture of the 



