60 IN CARLYLE'S COUNTRY. 



row the plowman is guided by stakes; having got 

 this one perfect, it is used as the model for every 

 subsequent one, and the land is thrown into ridges as 

 uniform and faultless as if it had been stamped at one 

 stroke with a die, or cast in a mould. It is so from 

 one end of the island to the other ; the same expert 

 seems to have done the work in every plowed and 

 planted field. 



Four miles from Lockerby I came to Mainhill, the 

 name of a farm where the Carlyle family lived many 

 years, and where Carlyle first read Goethe, " in a dry 

 ditch," Froude says, and translated "Wilhelm Meis- 

 ter." The land drops gently away to the south and 

 east, opening up broad views in these directions, but 

 it does not seem to be the bleak and windy place 

 Froude describes it. The crops looked good, and the 

 fields smooth and fertile. The soil is rather a stub- 

 born clay, nearly the same as one sees everywhere. 

 A sloping field adjoining the highway was being got 

 ready for turnips. The ridges had been cast; the 

 farmer, a courteous but serious and reserved man, 

 was sprinkling some commercial fertilizer in the fur- 

 rows from a bag slung across his shoulders, while a 

 boy, with a horse and cart, was depositing stable 

 manure in the same furrows, which a lassie, in clogs 

 and short skirts, was evenly distributing with a fork. 

 Certain work in Scotch fields always seems to be 

 done by women and girls, spreading manure, pull- 

 \ng weeds, and picking up sods, while they take 

 an equal hand with the men in the hay and harvest 

 6elds. 



