VI 



CONCERNING OLD STONE WALLS AND 

 COWS AND OTHER THINGS 



The final test to be applied to any type of farm- 

 ing is the kind of rural civilization that is nour- 

 ished by it. Every one with capacity to call up 

 visions of bygone things, and who has been so 

 blessed in childhood and youth as to have known 

 the life of a well conditioned farm, wUl possess 

 within himself a treasure house of halcyon mem- 

 ories. And every one will visualise a different pic- 

 ture of many diverse elements, yet each of them at 

 heart will be very much the same for each will glow 

 with the perennial rbagic of the Land. 



The old man whose locks are thin and white will 

 sit in the sun and close his eyes and hear again 

 across the years the ring of the whet-stone on the 

 steel and the swishing music of the swinging scythe, 

 or he will see the rhythmic sweep of cradlers laying 

 the long swaths of wheat and other men following 

 them to bind the sheaves with bands of twisted 

 straw, or he will remember again the bubbly sound 

 of milk being drawn from full udders into foaming 

 pails and the muffled gurgle of the old dash chum. 



61 



