A Farmer’s Life 
devoted affection that surrounded him, never- 
failing, was still not the same thing as the touches 
of struggle which had once assured him of 
Strength. After all, his joy had been less in 
getting things done than in the doing of them; 
and that was all past for him. It is no wonder 
if he sometimes sighed audibly. The zest of 
life was departing. It was crumbling away 
from his grasp. Daily he was losing hold. 
The progress of this change was as slow as it 
was sure. There was plenty of time for him to 
feel every hopeless pang—to watch his world 
escaping him inch by inch. Long after he 
could no longer get down to milk a cow he was 
able to go through Farnborough village with his 
milk; long after he lost the strength to deliver 
the milk himself he could travel with a grandson 
and so pass the time of day with his old cronies. 
Yet he might not totter to the back-doors and 
taste the village intimacies; he had to keep to 
the high-road, nor see over the hedges; and 
only so in the better weather. It was like 
looking on at his own slow dissolution. 
But at least it was slow. He was Still able to 
walk, that day he came to my house to see his 
last living sister, Ann, then on her death-bed. 
On the following Sunday afternoon, when I went 
to him to tell of her death, he had come down- 
Stairs, and saw me from his window, where he 
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