A Farmer’s Life 
evening, filled me with a deep content, especially 
in the company of this man and his country 
thoughts. I stopped to look over a gate, and 
murmured, “‘ What a beautiful place.” 
“Yes,” he said.. And then, with a sigmie @ 
wish it succeeded a little better.” 
The sudden contrast against my own feelings 
was disquieting. What place was there for 
commercial anxieties in all this charm? ‘The 
loveliest peace, the most venerable tasks, seemed 
threatened by failure. For example, my uncle’s 
potatoes had been cut down by that late frost 
the previous week. “Ice an inch thick that 
morning,” he said. Besides injury to the crops 
there was injury to the land. The potato-rows 
just ready for hoeing could no longer be distin- 
guished; so, although the couch was coming 
up thick, the hoe must still be withheld for a time. 
So then farmers might never share my own 
great delight in the weather—any weather—for 
its own sake? ‘There were always dreadful 
points of profit and loss for them to consider. 
The unwonted realisation of this weighed on my 
spirits, and seemed to rob my uncle’s talk of the 
flavour it should have had to match the beauty 
of his meadows and quiet fields. I didn’t so 
much enjoy his further talk. But he had no 
inkling of that, and went on as if nothing had 
happened. — 
100 
