to precocious literary subtleties.

On March 27th, 1877, I made this entry; "Today we move back upon the
farm."

This is all of it! No more, no less. Not a word to indicate whether I
regretted the decision or welcomed it, and from subsequent equally bald
notes, I derive the information that my father retained his position as
grain buyer, and that he drove back and forth daily over the five miles
which lay between the farm and the elevator. There is no mention of my
mother, no hint as to how she felt, although the return to the
loneliness and drudgery of the farm must have been as grievous to her as
to her sons.

Our muscles were soft and our heads filled with new ambitions but there
was no alternative. It was "back to the field," or "out into the cold,
cold world," so forth we went upon the soil in the old familiar way,
there to plod to and fro endlessly behind the seeder and the harrow. It
was harder than ever to follow a team for ten hours over the soft
ground, and early rising was more difficult than it had ever been
before, but I discovered some compensations which helped me bear these
discomforts. I saw more of the beauty of the landscape and I now had an
aspiration to occupy my mind.

My memories of the Seminary, the echoes of the songs we had heard, gave
the morning chorus of the prairie chickens a richer meaning than before.
The west wind, laden with the delicious smell of uncovered earth, the
tender blue of the sky, the cheerful chirping of the ground sparrows,
the jocund whistling of the gophers, the winding flight of the prairie
pigeons--all these sights and sounds of spring swept back upon me,
bringing something sweeter and more significant than before. I had
gained in perception and also in the power to assimilate what I
perceived.

This year in town had other far-reaching effects. It tended to warp us
from our father's designs. It placed the rigorous, filthy drudgery of
the farm-yard in sharp contrast with the carefree companionable
existence led by my friends in the village, and we longed to be of their
condition. We had gained our first set of comparative ideas, and with
them an unrest which was to carry us very far away.

True, neither Burton nor I had actually shared the splendors of
Congressman Deering's house but we had obtained revelatory glimpses of
its well-kept lawn, and through the open windows we had watched the
waving of its lace curtains. We had observed also how well Avery Brush's
fr