A MIDSUMMER IDYL 



changes. The farmer knows that he needs sun- 

 shine and crisp air to make maple-sugar as well as 

 to make hay. Let the high blue-domed day with 

 its dry northwest breezes change to a warmer, 

 overcast, humid day from the south, and the 

 flow of sap lessens at once. It would seem 

 as if the trees had nerves on the outside of their 

 dry bark, they respond to the change so quickly. 

 There is no sap without warmth, and yet warmth, 

 without any memory of the frost, stops the flow. 



The more the air presses upon us the lighter we 

 feel, and the less it presses upon us the more "logy" 

 we feel. Climb to the top of a mountain ten thou- 

 sand feet high, and you breathe and move with an 

 effort. The air is light, water boils at a low 

 temperature, and our lungs and muscles seem inade- 

 quate to perform their usual functions. There is 

 a kind of pressure that exhilarates us, and an 

 absence of pressure that depresses us. 



The pressure of congenial tasks, of worthy 

 work, sets one up, w^hile the idle, the unemployed, 

 has a deficiency of haemoglobin in his blood. 

 The Lord pity the unemployed man, and pity the 

 man so over-employed that the pressure upon him 

 is hke that upon one who works in a tunnel filled 

 with compressed air. 



Haying in this pastoral region is the first act in 

 the drama of the harvest, and one likes to see it 

 well staged, as it is to-day— the high blue dome, 



73 



