A TASTE OF KENTUCKY BLUE- 



GrRASS 



How beautiful is fertility ! A landscape of 

 fruitful and well- cultivated fields ; an unbroken 

 expanse of grass; a thick, uniform growth of 

 grain — how each of these fills and satisfies the 

 eye ! And it is not because we are essentially 

 'jtilitarian and see the rich loaf and the fat 

 beef as the outcome of it all, but because we 

 read in it an expression of the beneficence and 

 good- will of the earth. We love to see harmony 

 between man and nature; we love peace and 

 not war; we love the adequate, the complete. 

 A perfect issue of grass or grain is a satisfaction 

 to look upon, because it is a success. These 

 things have the beauty of an end exactly ful- 

 filled, the beauty of perfect fitness and propor- 

 tion. The barren in nature is ugly and repels 

 us, unless it be on such a scale and convey such 

 a suggestion of power as to awaken the emotion 

 of the sublime. What can be less mviting 

 than a neglected and exhausted Virginia farm, 

 the thin red soil showing here and there 

 through the ragged and scanty turf? and what, 

 on the other hand, can please the eye of a coun- 

 tryman more than the unbroken verdancy and 

 fertility of a Kentucky blue-grass farm? I 

 find I am Yery apt to take a farmer's view of a 



