312 FIELD AND HEDGEROW. 
first wild violets came. You might look along miles of 
hedgerow, but there were never any until they had 
shown by John Brown’s. 
If a man’s work that he has done all the days of his 
life could be collected and piled up around him in 
visible shape, what a vast mound there would be beside 
some! If each act or stroke was represented, say by a 
brick, John Brown would have stood the day before his 
ending by the side of a monument as high as a pyramid. 
Then if in front of him could be placed the sum and 
product of his labour, the profit to himself, he could 
have held it in his clenched hand like a nut, and no one 
would have seen it. Our modern people think they 
train their sons to strength by football and rowing and 
jumping, and what are called athletic exercises ; all of ' 
which it is the fashion now to preach as very noble, and 
likely to lead to the goodness of the race. Certainly 
feats are accomplished and records are beaten, but there 
is.no real strength gained, no hardihood built up. 
Without hardihood it is of little avail to be able to jump 
an inch farther than somebody else. Hardihood is the 
true test, hardihood is the ideal, and not these caperings 
or ten minutes’ spurts. 
Now, the way they made the boy John Brown hardy 
was to let him roll about on the ground with naked 
legs and bare head from morn till night, from June till 
December, from January till June. The rain fell on his 
head, and he played in wet grass to his knees. Dry 
bread and a little lard was his chief food. He went to 
work while he was still a child. At half-past three in the 
morning he was on his way to the farm stables, there to 
help feed the cart-horses, which used to be done with 
great care very early in the morning. The carter’s whip 
used to sting his legs, and sometimes he felt the butt. At 
