76 CHRONICLES OF A CLAY FARM. 



What is Education but a twenty-years' fallow, heart- 

 wearying and self-denying of the pleasures that seem 

 to bloom invitingly around us, luring the warm spirits 

 and fresh feelings of youth, to the easy indulgence of 

 more active enjoyment and contact with the world. 

 What is manhood but a continued sphere of the same 

 self-denial, another chapter in the biography of Toil 

 for a future crop amidst the wistful temptation of 

 surrounding fruition. What is Life itself but a 

 fallow and bare enough to many a weary and assi- 

 duous toiler a fallow for the future garnering of the 

 joyful crop that was sown in tears. 



And many such a truthful and intended analogy 

 does the Farmer read, albeit no metaphysical scholar, 

 in the book of nature's symbols. They reach the 

 eye of the mind through that of outAvard vision, 

 without the need of types and words. "It is not 

 Speech nor Language, yet their voices are heard." 

 And shame upon the parent and the country that 

 allows her sons to be banished, at the tender age 

 of childhood, from the school of early instruction to 

 the labours of the field, before the mind has received 

 that gentle care and training which enlivens, explains, 

 and even dignifies the lowest toil, if toil can ever 

 be really low, as only Ignorance imagines. The old 



