of any king,
prince, or president.

At first I was awkward enough, for it has been a long time since I have
done much hand planting; but I soon fell into the rhythmic swing of the
sower, the sure, even, accurate step; the turn of the body and the
flexing of the wrists as the hoe strikes downward; the deftly hollowed
hole; the swing of the hand to the seed-bag; the sure fall of the
kernels; the return of the hoe; the final determining pressure of the
soil upon the seed. One falls into it and follows it as he would follow
the rhythm of a march.

Even the choice of seed becomes automatic, instinctive. At first there
is a conscious counting by the fingers--five seeds:

One for the blackbird,
One for the crow,
One for the cutworm,
Two to grow.

But after a time one ceases to count five, and _feels_ five,
instinctively rejecting a monstrous six, or returning to complete an
inferior four.

I wonder if you know the feel of the fresh, soft soil, as it answers to
your steps, giving a little, responding a little (as life always
does)--and is there not something endlessly good and pleasant about it?
And the movement of the arms and shoulders, falling easily into that
action and reaction which yields the most service to the least energy!
Scientists tell us that the awkward young eagle has a wider wing-stretch
than the old, skilled eagle. So the corn planter, at noon, will do his
work with half the expended energy of the early morning: he attains the
artistry of motion. And quite beyond and above this physical
accomplishment is the ever-present, scarcely conscious sense of reward,
repayment, which one experiences as he covers each planting of seeds.

As the sun rose higher the mists stole secretly away, first toward the
lower brook-hollows, finally disappearing entirely; the morning coolness
passed, the tops of the furrows dried out to a lighter brown, and still
I followed the long planting. 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