MY FARM OF EDGEWOOD 



farmer's life is specially favored in this respect, 

 is the grossest kind of an untruth. 



Long evenings, forsooth ! And the ora- 

 tor who talks in this style is probably crawling 

 out of his bed at eight in the morning, while 

 the farmer is a-field since four. And are not 

 these four hours to be made good to him in 

 sleep or rest ? The man who rises at four, and 

 works all day, as farmers work, or who is 

 even a-field all day, is sleepy at nine p.m. It 

 is not, perhaps, a graceful truth; but it is a 

 physiological one. Nothing provokes appetite 

 for sleep so much as out-of-door life. You 

 may overstrain the nervous system, and dodge 

 the night ; but a strain upon the muscular sys- 

 tem must have its balance of repose. There 

 are, indeed, exceptional cases, where a work- 

 ing man with an undue preponderance of brain, 

 will steal hours between his labor for intel- 

 lectual cultivation; but he does it under diffi- 

 culties, which he is the first to recognize and 

 deplore. Even the most skilled of working 

 farmers arrive at their conclusions by an in- 

 tuitive sagacity, which is wholly remote from 

 the logical processes of books; and their 

 straightforward common-sense, however cor- 

 rect in its judgments, grows into a distaste for 

 the subtle arts of rhetoric. 



272 



