k. I like to work out of doors, where the sun shines and
the wind blows, where I can look up from my work and not be obliged to
look at a wall. I dislike to use a pen as a business. I want to make new
things and create new wealth, not to collect to myself the money earned by
others. I cannot feel the sympathy which makes me a part of nature, unless
I can be nearer to it than office or university life allows. I like to
create things. Had I been dexterous with my hands, I might have been an
artist; but I have found that I can make use of as high ideals, use as
much patience, and be of as much use in the world by modeling in flesh and
bone as I can by modeling in marble."

In spite of the common notion of the farm boys who shirk country life,
there is a great attraction now in the fact that farming really requires
brains of a high order, offers infinite opportunity for broad and deep
study, a chance for developing technical skill and personal initiative in
quite a variety of lines of work, all of which means a growing,
broadening life and increasing self-respect and satisfaction.

_The Partnership With Nature_

Any briefest mention of the attractiveness of country life would be
incomplete without reference to the nearness to nature and the privilege
of her inspiring comradeship. Not only is the farmer's sense of
partnership with nature a mighty impulse which tends to make him an
elemental man; but every dweller in the country with any fineness of
perception cannot fail to respond to the subtle appeal of the beautiful in
the natural life about him. As Washington Irving wrote, in describing
rural life in England, "In rural occupation there is nothing mean and
debasing. It leads a man forth among scenes of natural grandeur and
beauty; it leaves him to the working of his own mind, operated upon by the
purest and most elevating of external influences. Such a man may be simple
and rough, but he cannot be vulgar."

As young Bryant wrote among the beautiful Berkshire hills, "To him who in
the love of nature holds communion with her visible forms, she speaks a
various language." Without an interpreter, sometimes the message to the
soul is heard as in a foreign tongue; but the message is voiced again like
the music of perennial springs, and others hear it with ear and heart, and
it brings peace and comfort and God's love. In his beautiful chapter on
this topic Dr. W. L. Anderson writes: "By a subtle potency the rural
environmen