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AMERICAN HOMES AND GARDENS 
August, 1909 
Monthly Comment 
The Repose of Country Life 
NEW poet has arisen in the world. He has 
favored one of the New York daily papers 
with a little prose essay in which words are 
arranged in the most poetic fashion, so that 
the very dullest of readers must sit up and 
take notice. he soulful aspect of country 
lite has seldom been presented with more 
It is so choice a bit of pure literature that we 
exalted feeling. 
reproduce it entire: 
‘““WHEN man becomes weary of city life; when man is 
satiated with its glare and glitter, with its heartless artifici- 
ality, its sleepless energy, and its survival of the fittest; when 
man becomes weary of it all, he should withdraw for a while 
from its lights and shadows, and, amidst the peace and purity 
of country life, renew his health and his happiness. 
‘‘Amidst the silence and serenity of Nature, surrounded by 
the majesty of the mountains and the verdancy of the valleys, 
beneath the azure sky and the drifting cloud, where the bird 
and the brook and the breeze sing together and the forest 
and the field speak through the leaf and the flower; where 
the village lies scattered over the half-hidden valley, and the 
village church spire invokes its humble blessing; where the 
sun cheers the day, and the moon silvers the night, and the 
stars twinkle in a clear, unsullied firmament—such is Nature; 
such is the call of the wild; such is country life to which man 
should return when he becomes weary of the glare, glitter 
and artificiality of the modern metropolis.” 
Deticious! Is it not splendid and inspiring? In this 
gentle rhetoric the true soul of the poet is unveiled for the 
enlightenment, if need be, of quite common men and women. 
Real-estate owners, the purveyors of abandoned farms, the 
lessors of land everywhere, should immediately engage the 
services of this delightful author who, by the mere exercise 
of his imagination, could readily out-sell any half dozen of 
the “best sellers” of the fictional press. Surely Nature her- 
self has rarely produced a more ornate flower than this one 
we have plucked for the adornment of this page. 
WoOuLD that this exquisite picture were true! Would that 
but half of it were solid fact! Would that a quarter of it 
bore even a partial resemblance to actuality! But, alas, one 
can not seek the haven of the country without being in it and 
of it, and while no truer words than that ‘“‘the moon silvers 
the night’”” were ever uttered—and all the rest, so far as our 
poet leads us—none of these things has aught to do with 
bodily conditions, with the battle of existence, with the dif- 
ficulties with help, with the conflicts with Nature in raising 
crops or obtaining food, of making the land pay, or of even 
yielding the rent, with questions of taxation, with the idio- 
syncrasies of one’s neighbors, or with the vagaries of the 
local powers of government. This is, of course, bringing the 
poet down to hard life with a vengeance, yet agreeable as 
the products of the imagination may be, it is with the realities 
of things that life is chiefly concerned, and of no form of life 
is this truer than of country life. ; 
THE novice who seeks repose in country life enters upon 
an experience that may be both strange and weird, an ex- 
perience that is bound to test his patience and which is very 
likely to subject him to many unnecessary trials and embitter- 
ments. ‘The adventurer setting forth to conquer wild game 
in a distant continent deliberately seeks a life that offers every 
contrast to that to which he is accustomed. He goes into a 
strange world entirely aware of what he is doing and of what 
may happen to him while he is there. If he has been properly 
equipped, if he has familiarized himself with such details of 
this new wild life as may be available in civilized sources, the 
very things he thought would happen will happen. He will 
have his adventure, and perhaps plenty of it; he will live in 
the wild and be so very close to Nature that he can not sepa- 
rate himself from it unless he return to civilization and put a 
complete end to this enjoyable proximity. 
But the mere homeseeker in the country is very apt to have 
his delusions knocked out of him at so rapid a rate that he 
will have no energy to return to town, even if he has means to 
do so. Country life to the city-bred is a wholly new life. 
The most careful study of the problem, and the utmost of 
preliminary investigation, the most ambitious desire to suc- 
ceed, where success means comfort and quiet and peace will 
prove of little avail against the stern realities and solidities 
of country life. ‘Che most innocent things take on a new and 
horrifying reality, for Nature is never silent, and the hordes 
of cutworms and insects out in one’s own garden deprive 
the serenity of much of its reposefulness. The verdancy of 
the valleys is no longer joyful when the horrid lawn-mower 
stares one in the face, or its wheels positively refuse to go 
round. The drifting clouds are a bit tiresome when the roof 
is being repaired and all outdoor work must be postponed 
for the downpours of rain with which this natural phenome- 
non is accompanied. Nor does the scattering of the village 
exactly appeal to one, when one’s own house is a mile from the 
railroad station, and one must battle home through the rain, 
or wade knee high in drifts of snow, while the impossibility 
of getting any household necessity without going a long dis- 
tance for it—perhaps afoot—brings back a longing for a 
crowded trolley-car that is admittedly out of place in the 
concert of the bird, the brook and the breeze. 
Ir is sad to think that all this is true, but not nearly so 
sad as the sad truth itself. Rather by far the ecstasy of our 
poet, this dream-country of his extravaganza, this picture- 
world that can not be! Rather by far the dream than the 
reality everywhere. For have not the dreamers made the 
world? Do not our poets and our artists survive in memory 
and in work far beyond the fame of kings and men? And 
so the dream-world has its value, has its lessons and its use; 
but the home-maker in the country-side may well maintain 
that, after all, the realities of life have a practical every-day 
utility beside which the most sublime outpourings of the 
imagination have small relationship. 
REPOSE there is in the country, and plenty of it. And it is 
very beautiful and very abundant. But its enjoyment is only to 
be obtained at the price of hard work. One can not live suc- 
cessfully in the country without overcoming many difficulties. 
Some of these are personal, some exist in the land, some are 
due to the older inhabitants, some are due to the policy or 
lack of policy with which the district is governed. The 
human element is apt to carry as much weight in annoyances 
as the land question, and matters wholly outside of one’s con- 
trol may be as active in promoting discontent and unhappi- 
ness as those that one may personally direct and change. And 
if, from out this turmoil, one may snatch a few moments with 
the majesty of the mountains and the other peaceful aspects 
of the country, one may rest assured that one has won as 
much repose from Nature as the modern country life as 
practised and exemplified in the American suburbs can offer. 
