[ have long since been persuaded that I breathe through my feet (not 

 to the exclusion of my lungs, to be sure), and I am now, since becom- 

 ing a landholder, prone to believe that eyes, hands, and feet, are sorts 

 of receptive and assimilative organs, and that on the earth one can eat 

 without the usual routine. I feel a satisfied hunger when I get on my 

 farm (not denying that a lunch helps to the entire satisfaction of 

 hunger). A look about me as corn shocks stand yellow as rusty brass 

 in the slant light of autumn, or on the growing corn, standing tall and 

 straight as regulars on duty, with the utter grace of the blades as they 

 swing indolently as doing it out of courtesy and not of necessity; or 

 when I see tangles of weeds down along the runnels or hedge corners 

 (for I confess to a frank delight in weeds, even if they grow in a spirit 

 of impertinence in my field; for tangles of weeds are never inartistic. 

 They are like women, always of beautiful pose) and when I see weeds 

 on my farm and know that they are mine, I feel as if I had been at 

 Thanksgiving dinner (at another man's house). Contact with earth, 

 friend Emerson, is not only medicinal, but dietary. Set that down for 

 certain. When on my farm a spirit of courtesy controls me. I feel a 

 rising hospitality. I wish to invite the farmless to come in and sit 

 under my shade, and walk in my sunshine ; for I have both. People 

 may have their chance when on my premises. I feel a resident spirit 

 of pity for learned men, and lawyers, and merchants, and all such as 

 have no farm. I find myself looking at them with commiserative eyes, 

 though themselves look at my farm and me with ill-concealed pity, 

 while I hold on tight to my overalls one suspender being "busted;" 

 these landless men, I repeat, look at me with a smile ill concealed; 

 and I am not so blind as not to see that they have their jest at my 

 expense the minute they pass me by, turning to look back at me as if I 

 were a joke. To be patient with such superficiality and frivolity is hard, 

 but I am. If they pity me, I pity them; and I have the farm. And 

 this farm of mine is much more than people suppose. They think I 

 was buncoed when I bought the place; but I was not. They think so 

 because the descent of the farm is swift and the ascent slow. These 

 .are facts; but it does not follow that I was beaten in my bargain far 

 from it. This is my shrewdness. There is more land on a farm with 

 steep hills on it than on a level plot. One would think people would 

 know that, but people are not profound as I have discovered since 

 becoming a landholder; they see neither deep nor far. Now, as I have 

 intimated in plain statement, my farm taxes at eighty acres but after 



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