At each return I refilled my seed-bag, and
sometimes I drank from the jug of water which I had hidden in the grass.
Often I stood a moment by the fence to look up and around me. Through
the clear morning air I could hear the roosters crowing vaingloriously
from the barnyard, and the robins were singing, and occasionally from
the distant road I heard the rumble of a wagon. I noted the slow kitchen
smoke from Horace's chimney, the tip of which I could just see over the
hill from the margin of my field--and my own pleasant home among its
trees--and my barn--all most satisfying to look upon. Then I returned to
the sweat and heat of the open field, and to the steady swing of the
sowing.
[Illustration: "OFTEN I STOOD A MOMENT BY THE FENCE"]
Joy of life seems to me to arise from a sense of being where one
belongs, as I feel right here; of being foursquare with the life we have
chosen. All the discontented people I know are trying sedulously to be
something they are not, to do something they cannot do. In the
advertisements of the country paper I find men angling for money by
promising to make women beautiful and men learned or rich--overnight--by
inspiring good farmers and carpenters to be poor doctors and lawyers.
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