{ have long since been persuaded that I breathe through my feet (not 
to the exclusion of my lungs, to be sure), and I am now, since becom- 
ing a landholder, prone to believe that eyes, hands, and feet, are sorts 
of receptive and assimilative organs, and that on the earth one can eat 
without the usual routine. I feel a satisfied hunger when | get on my 
farm (not denying that a lunch helps to the entire satisfaction of 
hunger). A look about me as corn shocks stand yellow as rusty brass 
in the slant light of autumn, or on the growing corn, standing tall and 
straight as regulars on duty, with the utter grace of the blades as they 
swing indolently as doing it out of courtesy and not of necessity; or 
when I see tangles of weeds down along the runnels or hedge corners 
(for I confess to a frank delight in weeds, even if they grow in a spirit 
of impertinence in my field; for tangles of weeds are never inartistic. 
They are like women, always of beautiful pose )—and when I see weeds 
on my farm and know that they are mine, I feel as if | had been at 
Thanksgiving dinner (at another man’s house). Contact with earth, 
friend Emerson, is not only medicinal, but dietary. Set that down for 
certain. When on my farm a spirit of courtesy controls me. I feel a 
rising hospitality. I wish to invite the farmless to come in and sit 
under my shade, and walk in my sunshine; for I have both. People 
may have their chance when on my premises. I feel a resident spirit 
of pity for learned men, and lawyers, and merchants, and all such as 
have no farm. I find myself looking at them with commiserative eyes, 
though themselves look at my farm and me with ill-concealed pity, 
while I hold on tight to my overalls—one suspender being “ busted;’’— 
these landless men, I repeat, look at me with a smile il! concealed; 
and I am not so blind as not to see that they have their jest at my 
expense the minute they pass me by, turning to look back at me as if | 
were a joke. To be patient with such superficiality and frivolity is hard, 
but I am. If they pity me, I pity them; and I have the farm. And 
this farm of mine is much more than people suppose. They think | 
was buncoed when I bought the place; but I was not. They think so 
because the descent of the farm is swift and the ascent slow. These 
are facts; but it does not follow that I was beaten in my bargain—far 
from it. This is my shrewdness. There is more land on a farm with 
steep hills on it than on a level plot. One would think oe zple would 
know that, but people are not profound as | have discovered since 
becoming a landholder; they see neither deep nor far. Now, as I have 
intimated in plain statement, my farm taxes at eighty acres, but after 
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