142 RURAL LIFE IN CANADA 



It was my privilege to attend the first Students' Con- 

 vention at Northfield — that gathering of college men 

 at which the Student Volunteer Movement began. One 

 day a few of us were oft" for a tramp over the hills. 

 Coming across some huckleberry pickers we bought a 

 few berries. As we paid a woman for them I said, 

 " What a glorious view you have from these hills !" 

 With mild profanity but with strong feeling she 

 replied : " You wouldn't think so darn much of it if 

 you had to make a living here picking blueberries." 

 There were forces of feeling pent up within that 

 woman's nature, but resentment only at hard condi- 

 tions was felt. I have a friend, one of the largest- 

 natured and truest-hearted of all our ministers of the 

 Gospel, who in his youth was a gardener on one of 

 Scotland's great estates. Flowers in garden and green- 

 house were grown in utmost profusion. Seldom were 

 they seen except by the servants who tended them. 

 Thousands were cut daily and thrown aside. Hard 

 by was a great industrial city, yet none of its people, 

 destitute as they were of flowers and of all forms of 

 beauty, were ever permitted to see one blossom of the 

 boundless store near by. As a consequence, to one 

 true heart which until then had loved flowers they are 

 now a source of pain. So, with some who dwell in 

 the country, all nature is so intimately blent with asso- 

 ciations of toil that it cannot be looked on with plea- 

 sure. With yet more these sensibilities have never 

 been aroused. The latent power was there, and, as the 

 harpstring vibrates when a note is struck on a string 

 of similar pitch, might have awaked at the touch of 

 nature-love in another heart. 



