TAKING REINS IN HAND. 81 



" iieat," he will not prove the Arcadian companion at 

 dinner, which readers of Somerville imagine, neither 

 on the score of conversation, or of transpiration. 

 Active, every-day farm labor is certainly not congru- 

 ous with a great many of those cleanly prejudices 

 which grow out of the refinements of civilization. 

 We must face the bald truth in this matter ; a man 

 who has only an hour to his nooning, will not squan- 

 der it upon toilet labors ; and a long day of close 

 field-work leaves one in very unfit mood for apprecia- 

 tive study of either poetry or the natural sciences. 



The pastoral idea, set off with fancies of earth- 

 en bowls, tables under trees, and appetites that are 

 sated with bread and milk, or crushed berries and 

 sugar, and with the kindred fancies of rural swains, 

 who can do a good day's work and keep their linen 

 clean, is all a most wretched phantasm. Pork, and 

 cabbage, and dirty wristbands, are the facts. 



Plainly, the milkmaids must have a home to them- 

 selves, where no dreary etiquette shall -oppress them. 

 This home, which is properly the farmer's, lies some 

 eighth of a mile southward, upon the same highway 

 that passes my door. For a few rods the road keeps 

 upon a gravelly ridge, from which, eastward, stretches 

 away the wide-reaching view I have already noted ; 

 and westward, in as full sight, is the little valley 



lawn, where the shadows of the copses lie splintered 

 4* 



