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The farmer's business brings him to notice the aspects of 

 nature that are changing with every day, and for the different 

 periods of the year. There is no one that keeps the time 

 through all the year as the farmer does. His different em- 

 ployments return with tlie seasons and come to be associated 

 with them. Everything that is peculiar in the year affects 

 them. With an early spring the work comes soon and hurries 

 all the hands. If it is a warm, wet summer, the hay goes up 

 over the great beams to the ridgepole of the barn ; and the boys 

 have a tough time crowding it away under the rafters. The 

 very dry and hot year shows itself upon the Indian corn, that 

 loves the scorching sun. But if it is cool and only moderately 

 dry, the potatoes are large and thick in the hill. A snow- 

 storm in the first part of November brings home the young 

 cattle and the sheep, to take their breakfast spread over the 

 ground in the next field ; for it is too early yet for their winter 

 quarters. 



The most ignoble and unsatisfactory of all pursuits is the 

 driving of calves. It is appointed to this animal tribe to 

 attain to the full command of its physical organs much earlier 

 than it is able to appreciate the motives in accordance with 

 which they should be directed ; that is, as I suppose a German 

 philosopher would say, before it has reached the polarization of 

 its related consciousness : or, as it may be otherwise stated, 

 the creature will run with the wind before he knows anything. 

 After a long chase you have brought him to the bottom of the 

 hill by the gate, and the rest of the cattle have gone through. 

 You look upon them with a sense of relief and approbation as 

 they walk decently along the road. It would have been better 

 to have watched the calf. He springs off too suddenly to be 

 stopped. His thin frame offers no resistance to the air, except 

 that he is swayed a little aside into a gentle bend, like a sheet 

 that moves upon its edge. It is the most hyperbolical and 

 returnless of curves. He is across the ravine and over the 

 ridge beyond. By good luck, however, you get past him at an 

 angle of the fence, and he bears away for the gate, frightened 

 and bellowing. The whole herd comes back to see what the 



