wanderings refreshed, stimulated, happy. And
nowhere, whether in cities, or travelling in trains, or sailing upon the
sea, have I so often felt this curious enrichment as I have upon this
hillside, working alone in field, or garden, or orchard, It seems to
come up out of the soil, or respond to the touch of growing things.

What makes any work interesting is the fact that one can make
experiments, try new things, develop specialties and _grow_. And where
can he do this with such success as on the land and in direct contact
with nature. The possibilities are here infinite new machinery,
spraying, seed testing, fertilizers, experimentation with new varieties.
A thousand and one methods, all creative, which may be tried out in that
great essential struggle of the farmer or gardener to command all the
forces of nature.

Because there are farmers, and many of them, who do not experiment and
do not grow, but make their occupation a veritable black drudgery, this
is no reason for painting a sombre-hued picture of country life. Any
calling, the law, the ministry, the medical profession, can be blasted
by fixing one's eyes only upon its ugliest aspects. And farming, at its
best, has become a highly scientific, extraordinarily absorbing, and
when all is said, a profitable, profession. Neighbours of mine have
developed systems of overhead irrigation to make rain when there is no
rain, and have covered whole fields with cloth canopies to increase the
warmth and to protect the crops from wind and hail, and by the analysis
of the soil and exact methods of feeding it with fertilizers, have come
as near a complete command of nature as any farmers in the world. What
independent, resourceful men they are! And many of them have also grown
rich in money. It is not what nature does with a man that matters but
what he does with nature.

Nor is it necessary in these days for the farmer or the country dweller
to be uncultivated or uninterested in what are often called, with no
very clear definition, the "finer things of life." Many educated men are
now on the farms and have their books and magazines, and their music and
lectures and dramas not too far off in the towns. A great change in this
respect has come over American country life in twenty years. The real
hardships of pioneering have passed away, and with good roads and
machinery, and telephones, and newspapers every day by rural post, the
farmer may maintain as close a touch with the b