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A TASTE OF KENTUCKY BLUE-GEASS 



"TirOW beautiful is fertility! A landscape of 

 -' — '- fruitful and weU-cultivated fields; an un- 

 broken expanse of grass; a thick, uniform growth of 

 grain — how each of these fills and satisfies the eye ! 

 And it is not because we are essentially utilitarian 

 and see the rich loaf and the fat beef as the outcome 

 of it all, but because we read in it an expression of 

 the beneficence and good- will of the earth. We love 

 to see harmony between man and nature; we love 

 peace and not war; we love the adequate, the com- 

 plete. A perfect issue of grass or grain is a satis- 

 faction to look upon, because it is a success. These 

 things have the beauty of an end exactly fulfilled, 

 the beauty of perfect fitness and proportion. The 

 barren in nature is ugly and repels us, unless it be 

 on such a scale and convey such a suggestion of 

 power as to awaken the emotion of the sublime. 

 What can be less inviting than a neglected and 

 exhausted Virginia farm, the thin red soil showing 

 here and there through the ragged and scanty turf ? 

 and what, on the other hand, can please the eye of 

 a countryman more than the unbroken verdancy and 

 fertility of a Kentucky blue-grass farm? I find I 



