@ Cure for Winter 
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, short 
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 canriot 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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