3IO AROUND AN OLD HOMESTEAD. 



beginning. Tilling the soil was not the curse. The 

 curse was the expulsion from the presence of God. 

 And so, as if with the memory of thousands of years 

 within him, farming — a means of livelihood, of some 

 kind, in the open air — is not only the most primitive 

 occupation known to man, but is the fundamental basis 

 of procedure upon which all great business enterprises 

 are conducted. The farm is the type in the study of 

 political economy. 



So that our poetic appreciations of Nature are per- 

 force in time translated into terms of industry. The 

 lover of the woods becomes a forester or lumberman; 

 the lover of animals a shepherd, cattle raiser, stock 

 breeder; the lover of open country life, such as Virgil 

 depicts in his "Georgics," becomes the bee keeper, 

 poultry raiser, fruit grower, and general cultivator of 

 the soil for wheat and corn and garden produce. 



We were made to work and to earn our bread, and 

 the man or woman who does not labor, and work 

 earnestly and with interest, is a parasite upon his fel- 

 lows. Yet not only to work; but to enjoy our work 

 and others' work, to have the satisfaction of some 

 repose after work well done, the opportunity of study- 

 ing and comparing life and the methods of life, and 

 of reading the literature of other men's labors. We 

 were made to work, but not to slave. Rest and quiet 

 are as much a part of life as the work of the day, and 

 almost as essential to the real spiritual return of the 

 work as the toil is itself. 



Yet does the farmer, when he turns the wheat over 

 in his hand, look admiringly at the beautiful grains? 

 Not a bit of it. He is scrutinizing them to see whether 



