developed systems of overhead irrigation to make rain when there is no
rain, and have covered whole fields with cloth canopies to increase the
warmth and to protect the crops from wind and hail, and by the analysis
of the soil and exact methods of feeding it with fertilizers, have come
as near a complete command of nature as any farmers in the world. What
independent, resourceful men they are! And many of them have also grown
rich in money. It is not what nature does with a man that matters but
what he does with nature.

Nor is it necessary in these days for the farmer or the country dweller
to be uncultivated or uninterested in what are often called, with no
very clear definition, the "finer things of life." Many educated men are
now on the farms and have their books and magazines, and their music and
lectures and dramas not too far off in the towns. A great change in this
respect has come over American country life in twenty years. The real
hardships of pioneering have passed away, and with good roads and
machinery, and telephones, and newspapers every day by rural post, the
farmer may maintain as close a touch with the best things the world has
to offer as any man. And if he really have such broader interests the
winter furnishes him time and leisure that no other class of people can
command.

I do not know, truly, what we are here for upon this wonderful and
beautiful earth, this incalculably interesting earth, unless it is to
crowd into a few short years--when all is said, terribly short
years!--every possible fine experience and adventure: unless it is to
live our lives to the uttermost: unless it is to seize upon every fresh
impression, develop every latent capacity: to grow as much as ever we
have it in our power to grow. What else can there be? If there is no
life beyond this one, we have lived _here_ to the uttermost. We've had