54 FRESH FIELDS 



perfect, it is used as the model for every subsequent 

 one, and the land is thrown into ridges as uniform 

 and faultless as if it had been stamped at one stroke 

 with a die, or cast in a mould. It is so from one 

 end of the island to the other; the same expert 

 seems to have done the work in every plowed and 

 planted field. 



Four miles from Lockerbie I came to Mainhill, 

 the name of a farm where the Carlyle family lived 

 many years, and where Carlyle first read Goethe, 

 "in a dry ditch," Froude says, and translated 

 "Wilhelm Meister." The land drops gently away 

 to the south and east, opening up broad views in 

 these directions, but it does not seem to be the 

 bleak and windy place Froude describes it. The 

 crops looked good, and the fields smooth and fer- 

 tile. The soil is rather a stubborn clay, nearly the 

 same as one sees everywhere. A sloping field ad- 

 joining the highway was being got ready for tur- 

 nips. The ridges had been cast ; the farmer, a cour- 

 teous but serious and reserved man, was sprinkling 

 some commercial fertilizer in the furrows from a 

 bag slung across his shoulders, while a boy, with 

 a horse and cart, was depositing stable manure in 

 the same furrows, which a lassie, in clogs and short 

 skirts, was evenly distributing with a fork. Certain 

 work in Scotch fields always seems to be done by 

 women and girls, — spreading manure, pulling 

 weeds, and picking up sods, — while they take an 

 equal hand with the men in the hay and harvest 

 fields. 



