Harrisburg telegraph. [volume] (Harrisburg, Pa.) 1879-1948, 1919-09-10
FARMING
By BRIGGS

Farming Is the one pursuit which
all the ages have failed to invest
with the glamour of romance.
Perhaps this is because it began
as womans work, one of those in
evitable necessities which may be
elevated to the status of q homely
virtue and rewarded as such. Per-
haps it is because the yearly triumph
! of the harvest was no such glorious
| pageant as the spoils of q victorious
war: and there were no expert eco
nomists to compute costs and prof
its. AS civilization advanced there
were always slaves to turn to the
monotonous tasks and landholders
merely supervised without griminS
their hands by contact with the soil.
Even where some such early Social
ist as Cincinnatus recognized the
dignity of the occupation, his fame
| now rests on his political and mill
| tary successes. We know he farm
ed, but who tells us how wisely or
how well?
In the early days of America came
the first chance to ennoble farming.
| The highest as well as the lowest
turned their hand to it perforce. We
were a nation of agriculturists.
| Songs were written about the horny
| handed son of toll" and praise
meted out to him who earned his
| bread, as the Bible puts it, 'by the
sweat of his brow" The country
| beauty in her crisp calico was COM
pared with the silken lady of the
town to the latter's detriment. But
! the incontrovertible fact remains
that sweat is uncomfortable, and no
! poetic rationalism can make wo-
man prefer cotton to the fabric
whose lustrous folds whisper of lux
| ury and ease, of lutes and love,
rather than soapsuds and self-de-
nial. And rarely does any one voice
: the inward satisfactions which turn
the balance.
| Indeed, the farmer who can recog-
nize them for himself is rare. For
his ambitions are as various as the
minds of men. i have one neighbor
who wants money - money enough
to retire. Money is what everything
he touches means to him; his fancy
| invests each head of wheat, each
cackling hen or newborn pig with
the Midas touch. / wonder if in
the end he will find the satisfac-
ton he hopes in what he dimly Wis
ions for himself as "city life"
Another, wslom I have always
thought an unambitious man, started
me thinking these things. Being un-
lettered he came to me to put his
small accounts in shape for him.
After the exorbitant wages of the
day labor he had been forced to
hire through harvest time, his own
eward seemed humiliatingly slim.
ITS enough to make you want to
try the shipyard," | said.
He shook his head. NO, farm
ms n natural work. A man amt
doin' it just for what he gets out
of it alone. He kin always feel it's
the most use he could ever be. It's
the most need. And I want to do as
l see, not be doin' accordin' to what
the. other fellow says. / mightn't
agree with h!:a." You can hardly
call him uncducated after that.
Many trained mind never reasons
things so far.
But l know another who has
raised his work to where it truly
belongs, among the arts. The sweat
of the harvest cannot blind his eyes
to the least detail of the life around
him, the lark as we'll as the hen,
the weeds with the corn, the field
mouse reused by the tread of the
eve. He feels not only the
triumph of his individual achieve
ment, but the thrill of growth and
fruition through the greatest plan.
He touches hands with Nature,
works her under the vitalizing sun.
And to him, as to the artist, sheer
joy in his work is to be counted in
| his reward.-John Breck.