d to feel, a curious response: a
strange answering of life to life. The stone had been rolled from the
sepulchre!

And I knew then that the destined time had arrived for my planting. That
afternoon I marked out my corn-field, driving the mare to my home-made
wooden marker, carefully observant of the straightness of the rows; for
a crooked corn-row is a sort of immorality. I brought down my seed corn
from the attic, where it had hung waiting all winter, each ear suspended
separately by the white, up-turned husks. They were the selected ears of
last year's crop, even of size throughout, smooth of kernel, with tips
well-covered--the perfect ones chosen among many to perpetuate the
highest excellencies of the crop. I carried them to the shed next my
barn, and shelled them out in my hand machine: as fine a basket of
yellow dent seed as a man ever saw. I have listened to endless
discussions as to the relative merits of flint and dent corn. I here
cast my vote emphatically for yellow dent: it is the best Nature can do!

I found my seed-bag hanging, dusty, over a rafter in the shed, and
Harriet sewed a buckle on the strip that goes around the waist. I
cleaned and sharpened my hoe.

"Now," I said to myself, "give me a good day and I am ready to plant."

The sun was just coming up on Friday, looking over the trees into a
world of misty and odorous freshness. When I climbed the fence I dropped
down in the grass at the far corner of the field. I had looked forward
this year with pleasure to the planting of a small field by hand--the
adventure of it--after a number of years of horse planting (with
Horace's machine) of far larger fields. There is an indescribable
satisfaction in answering, "Present!" to the roll-call of Nature; to
plant when the earth is ready, to cultivate when the soil begins to bake
and harden, to harvest when the grain is fully ripe. It is the chief
joy of him who lives close to the soil that he comes, in time, to beat
in consonance with the pulse of the earth; its seasons become his
seasons; its life his life.

Behold me, then, with a full seed-bag suspended before me, buckled both
over the shoulders and around the waist, a shiny hoe in my hand (the
scepter of my dominion), a comfortable, rested feeling in every muscle
of my body, standing at the end of the first long furrow there in my
field on Friday morning--a whole spring day open before me! At that
moment I would not have changed my place for the place