146 CHKONICLES OF A CLAY FARM. 



the dull sloth of sleeping partnership. Not organ- 

 ized itself, it is yet the active source of organism. 

 Its gifts come to man duty-laden. To take the one 

 without the other is, in the long run, impossible. 

 And curiously enough, the Earth is herself the first 

 witness of a breach of the duties she devolves on 

 and between those who cultivate, or inherit, her 

 gifts, as she was of the earliest wrong committed 

 between man and his brother man. She speaks, 

 with most miraculous organ ; and tells you the 

 character of the cultivator, or the proprietor, or 

 both, as plainly as your eyes may choose to read it. 

 Take a walk through an Allotment-ground.* To 

 an expert eye, does not each little oblong plot of 

 land, with its varied produce, care, culture, and 

 condition, tell its separate tale, as if the soil were 

 the destined mirror of the hand and mind of man? 

 Does it need the voice or finger of the showman to 

 point out the characteristics of the several occu- 

 pants ? Here there is industry, there idleness ; here 

 again there is hard labor, without skill or knowledge ; 

 there you have experimental attempts, despising 



* Allotments are small pieces of ground parceled out to 

 laborers on the farm by their employers, which the laborer 

 or his family cultivates at leisure hours, for their own 

 benefit ED. 



