RING PLOUGHING

"See-Saw, Margery Daw!
Sold her bed and lay upon straw"

--the very worst thing, I used to think, that ever happened in Mother
Goose. I might steal a pig, perhaps, like Tom the Piper's Son, but
never would I do such a thing as Margery did; the dreadful picture of
her nose and of that bottle in her hand made me sure of that. And
yet--snore on, Margery!--I sold my _plough_ and bought an automobile!
As if an automobile would carry me

"To the island-valley of Avilion,"

where I should no longer need the touch of the soil and the slow simple
task to heal me of my grievous wound!

Speed, distance, change--are these the cure for that old hurt we call
living, the long dull ache of winter, the throbbing bitter-sweet pain
of spring? We seek for something different, something not different
but faster and still faster, to fill our eyes with flying, our ears
with rushing, our skins with scurrying, our diaphragms, which are our
souls, with the thrill of curves, and straight stretches, of lifts, and
drops, and sudden halts--as of elevators, merry-go-rounds, chutes,
scenic railways, aeroplanes, and heavy low-hung cars.

To go--up or down, or straight away--anyway, but round and round, and
slowly--as if one could speed away from being, or ever travel beyond
one's self! How pathetic to sell all that one has and buy an
automobile! to shift one's grip from the handles of life to the wheel
of change! to forsake the furrow for the highway, the rooted soil for
the flying dust, the here for the there; imagining that somehow a car
is more than a plough, that going is the last word in
living--demountable rims and non-skid tires, the great gift of the God
Mechanic, being the 1916 model of the wings of the soul!

But women must weep in spite of modern mechanics, and men must plough.
Petroleum, with all of its by-products, cannot be served for bread. I
have tried many substitutes for ploughing; and as for the automobile, I
have driven that thousands of miles, driven it almost daily, summer and
winter; but let the blackbirds return, let the chickweed start in the
garden, then the very stones of the walls cry out--"Plough! plough!"

It is not the stones I hear, but the entombed voices of earlier
primitive selves far back in my dim past; those, and the call of the
boy I was yesterday, whose landside toes still turn in, perhaps, from
walking in the furrow. When that call comes, no

"Towered cities please us the