me to distinguish between the nature
of work in cities and work in the country. To obtain my meal in a city
I had to do things that were distasteful to me; I had to shut myself
away from the fresh air and sunlight in a dingy room and to spend dull
hours in tasks which afforded me no genuine intellectual pleasure.
Here, on the contrary, every duty had a pastime yoked with it. I rose
early, not only that I might learn to milk the cows, but that I might
see the sunrise; if I went into the woods to saw logs that would
presently make a clear flame on the evening fire, my lungs drank health
among the forest fragrances; when I went fishing I did something not
only pleasurable but useful, for I added dainties to my larder. In the
city I lived to work; here I worked to live. I might go further and
say that in the city I lived to work for other people, for my brains
were daily exploited that my master might maintain a house at
Kensington, and when the landlord, the water-lord, the light-lord, and
the rate-collector had all had their dues from me there was little
enough left that I could call my own. Here, on the contrary, all that
I did had an immediate and direct relation to my own well-being. The
amount of work I had to do to live was light, and I bought with it
something that was my own. We are so used to the exactions of a
complicated and artificial life, that it is an amazing discovery to
ascertain how small is the toll of labour which Nature asks of those
who live naturally. You have but to do certain things which in
themselves are pleasures to obtain ample means of life; and as these
things are soon and easily done by a healthy human creature there is an
abundant leisure at his command. To split pine-logs, dig a garden,
pull a heavy boat down the lake after fish, tramp up the hillside to
collect the sheep, are simply so many exercises of the body, the
equivalents of which town youths find in the gymnasium or the football
field; the difference is that all this exertion in the gymnasium, which
the town youth takes to keep up his health, would in the country _keep
him_. The same amount of muscular exertion which a town youth puts
forth to chase a ball round a twenty acre field would, if properly
applied, put a roof over his head and food on his table. The sports of
the civilised man are means of life to the natural man. If a man must
needs sweat, and be bemired, and have an aching back, it is surely
better economy