must suddenly turn blacksmith when his machine breaks down and tinker
with wrench and hammer; and later in the day he becomes dairyman,
farrier, harness-maker, merchant. No kind of wheat but is grist to his
mill, no knowledge that he cannot use! And who is freer to be a citizen
than he: freer to take his part in town meeting and serve his state in
some one of the innumerable small offices which form the solid blocks of
organization beneath our commonwealth.

I thought last fall that corn-husking came as near being monotonous
work, as any I had ever done in the country. I presume in the great
corn-fields of the West, where the husking goes on for weeks at a time,
it probably does grow really monotonous. But I soon found that there was
a curious counter-reward attending even a process as repetitive as this.

I remember one afternoon in particular. It was brisk and cool with
ragged clouds like flung pennants in a poverty-stricken sky, and the
hills were a hazy brown, rather sad to see, and in one of the apple
trees at the edge of the meadow the crows were holding their mournful
autumn parliament.

At such work as this one's mind often drops asleep, or at least goes
dreaming, except for the narrow margin of awareness required for the
simple processes of the hands. Its orders have indeed been given: you
must kneel here, pull aside the stalks one by one, rip down the husks,
and twist off the ear--and there is the pile for the stripped stalks,
and here the basket for the gathered corn, and these processes
infinitely repeated.

While all this is going on, the mind itself wanders off to its own far
sweet pastures, upon its own dear adventures--or rests, or plays. It is