do see nothing in these
things, save as they do affect their crops of grain or grasses, or their
bodily comforts in one way or another. But to them whose minds have
been enlightened and made large and free by study and much reflection,
and whose eyes have been taught to behold the beauty and fitness of
things, and whose ears have been so opened that they can hear the
ravishing harmonies of the creation, the life of a planter is very
desirable even in this wilderness, and notwithstanding the toil and
privation thereunto appertaining. There be fountains gushing up in the
hearts of such, sweeter than the springs of water which flow from the
hillsides, where they sojourn; and therein, also, flowers of the summer
do blossom all the year long. The brutish man knoweth not this, neither
doth the fool comprehend it."

"See, now," said Polly to me, "how hard he is upon us poor unlearned
folk."

"Nay, to tell the truth," said he, turning towards me, "your cousin here
is to be held not a little accountable for my present inclinations; for
she it was who did confirm and strengthen them. While I had been busy
over books, she had been questioning the fields and the woods; and, as
if the old fables of the poets were indeed true, she did get answers
from them, as the priestesses and sibyls did formerly from the rustling
of leaves and trees, and the sounds of running waters; so that she could
teach me much concerning the uses and virtues of plants and shrubs, and
of their time of flowering and decay; of the nature and habitudes of
wild animals and birds, the changes of the air, and of the clouds and
winds. My science, so called, had given me little more than the names
of things which to her were familiar and common. It was in her company
that I learned to read nature as a book always open, and full of
delectable teachings, until my poor school-lore did seem undesirable and
tedious, and the very chatter of the noisy blackbirds in the spring
meadows more profitable and more pleasing than the angry disputes and
the cavils and subtleties of schoolmen and divines."

My cousin blushed, and, smiling through her moist eyes at this language
of her beloved friend, said that I must not believe all he said; for,
indeed, it was along of his studies of the heathen poets that he had
first thought of becoming a farmer. And she asked him to repeat some of
the verses which he had at his tongue's end. He laughed, and said he
did suppose she mean