HAPPY HOLLOW FARM 189 



That's ignorance. There's nothing friend- 

 lier in all this world than the good brown earth 

 itself if only you can rid yourself of the feeling 

 that its forces are fighting against you. 

 They're not. If you persist in thinking so, and 

 persist in fighting back, you're in pretty much 

 the state of mind of the man who stays awake 

 all night trying to drive the little green monkey 

 off the foot of his bed. You're seeing things 

 that don't exist. Do you suppose that feeling 

 may be just a survival of the old time when 

 men believed in a tribe of gods and demons 

 who rode the wind and the clouds and the sun 

 and trifled with human affairs in a reckless, 

 devil-may-care sort of way? I shouldn't won- 

 der. There's a lot that's primitive still alive in 

 the best of us. But maybe it's only the skit- 

 tishness of plain ignorance. 



There's a mighty good way to exorcise those 

 irresponsible spirits, if they beset you and 

 you're afraid they're going to put their spell 

 on your land. Beat them to it! Just go cou- 

 rageously and serenely out, set your feet 

 squarely on the soil and put your own spell 

 upon it by doing some plain, every-day think- 

 ing judiciously mixed with some plain, every- 

 day hard work! That's all there is to it. 



