the time to have written the book that I had intended this one
to be--while the adventure in contentment was still an adventure, while
the lure of the land was of fourteen acres yet unexplored, while back
to the soil meant exactly what the seed catalogues picture it, and my
summer in a garden had not yet passed into its frosty fall. Instead, I
have done what no writer ought to do, what none ever did before, unless
Jacob wrote,--taken a fourteen-year-old enthusiasm for my theme, to
find the enthusiasm grown, as Rachel must have grown by the time Jacob
got her, into a philosophy, and like all philosophies, in need of
defense.

What men live by is an interesting speculative question, but what men
live on, and where they can live,--with children to bring up, and their
own souls to save,--is an intensely practical question which I have
been working at these fourteen years here in the Hills of Hingham.

CONTENTS

I. THE HILLS OF HINGHAM
II. THE OPEN FIRE
III. THE ICE CROP
IV. SEED CATALOGUES
V. THE DUSTLESS-DUSTER
VI. SPRING PLOUGHING
VII. MERE BEANS
VIII. A PILGRIM FROM DUBUQUE
IX. THE HONEY FLOW
X. A PAIR OF PIGS
XI. LEAFING
XII. THE LITTLE FOXES
XIII. OUR CALENDAR
XIV. THE FIELDS OF FODDER
XV. GOING BACK TO TOWN
XVI. THE CHRISTMAS TREE

[Illustration: The hills of Hingham]

I

THE HILLS OF HINGHAM

"As Surrey hills to mountains grew
In White of Selborne's loving view"

Really there are no hills in Hingham, to speak of, except Bradley Hill
and Peartree Hill and Turkey Hill, and Otis and Planter's and Prospect
Hills, Hingham being more noted for its harbor and plains. Everybody
has heard of Hingham smelts. Mullein Hill is in Hingham, too, but
Mullein Hill is only a wrinkle on the face of Liberty Plain, which
accounts partly for our having it. Almost anybody can have a hill in
Hingham who is content without elevation, a surveyor's term as applied
to hills, and a purely accidental property which is not at all
essential to real hillness, or the sense of height. We have a stump on
Mullein Hill for height. A hill in Hingham is not only possible, but
even practical as compared with a Forest in Arden, Arden being
altogether too far from town; besides

". . . there's no clock in the forest"

and we have the 8.35 train to catch of a winter morning!

"A sheep-cote fenced about with olive trees"

sounds more pastoral than apple trees ar