Meta Book

There are few scenes more
gratifying than a spring plowing in that country, where the furrows
of a single field often lie a mile in length, and the brown earth,
with such a strong, clean smell, and such a power of growth and
fertility in it, yields itself eagerly to the plow; rolls away
from the shear, not even dimming the brightness of the metal, with
a soft, deep sigh of happiness. The wheatcutting sometimes goes
on all night as well as all day, and in good seasons there are
scarcely men and horses enough to do the harvesting. The grain is
so heavy that it bends toward the blade and cuts like velvet.
There is something frank and joyous and young in the open face
of the country. It gives itself ungrudgingly to the moods of the
season, holding nothing back. Like the plains of Lombardy, it
seems to rise a little to meet the sun. The air and the earth are
curiously mated and intermingled, as if the one were the breath
of the other. You feel in the atmosphere the same tonic, puissant
quality that is in the tilth, the same strength and resoluteness.


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