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it is good for them; it is health, not disease — with 

 snowshoes provided and snow-colored fur. 



Nature supplies her own remedies. Winter brings 

 its own cure, — snowshoes and snowy coats, sliort 

 days and long nights, the narrowed round, the wid- 

 ened view, the open fire, leisure, quiet, and the com- 

 panionship of your books, your children, your wife, 

 your own strange soul — here on the farm. 



Where else does it come, bringing all of this ? 

 Where else are conditions such that all weather is 

 good weather ? the weather a man needs ? Here he 

 is planted like his trees ; his roots are in the soil ; the 

 changing seasons are his life. He feeds upon them ; 

 works with them ; rests in them ; yields to them, and 

 finds in their cycle more than the sum of his physical 

 needs. 



A man lives quite without roots in a city, like some 

 of the orchids, hung up in the air; or oftener, like 

 the mistletoe, rooted, but drawing his life parasiti- 

 cally from some simpler, stronger, fresher life planted 

 far below him in the soil. There he cannot touch the 

 earth and feed upon life's first sources. He knows 

 little of any kind but bad weather. Summer is hot, 

 winter is nasty, spring and autumn scarcely are at 



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