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mind to equal those of country and farming life. Oh ! 

 in the growing summer time, and in the bountiful 

 autumn, what a dreary confinement — what a joyless 

 prison is the great, noisome, tumultuous city, walled up 

 with brick and mortar, and the close, compact, crowded 

 town ! Oh, give me the pleasant, open, sunshiny fields, 

 the grassy lawns with the flowers and the dew drops, and 

 the woods with their musical leaves, where the shadows 

 dance in and out and the streams leap and sing on their 

 gladsome way, where my soul is refreshed with nature, 

 ever new and beautiful nature, and in whose quiet, lonely 

 haunts of beauty, I may meet God as it were face to face. 

 What a pleasure even is it — a pleasure to soul as well as 

 sense- — to the selfish anticipations of future good living, 

 as well as to the disinterested heart of philanthropy, to 

 see these goodly shows of fresh vegetables, and tempting, 

 luscious fruits, that are to strengthen the stout arm of 

 labor and paint with new charms the flushing cheek of 

 beauty ! And what a greater delight still, to wander 

 over the pleasant farms and through the dear old farm 

 houses, whence these treasures are gathered. Ripening 

 in the autumnal sunbeams, there lie the great yellow 

 pumpkins with their shining faces tantalizing the longing 

 cows as they stand agaze at their nutricious glories over 

 the unkind bars, or conjuring up, in the minds of passing 

 school children, visions of spicy pies and future thanks- 

 giving suppers. And near by, now" sitting erect, now 

 lying down or turning their sides to the warmth, like 

 villages of marmots on the far western prairies, are the 

 various tribes of crook-neck and bell-neck, of custard, 

 and marrow, and hardshell. Heaps of golden corn, with 

 the glowing red ear — that joy of youth and maiden in 

 the dear old husking frolics — begin to give their light to 

 the barns, and white turnips, with great sleepy cabbages, 

 suggestive of the steaming boiled pot and well fed wash- 



