The hill farmer ... always seems to make out somehow with his corn patch, his few vegetables, his rifle, and fishing rod. This sel...f-contained economy creates in the hillman a comparative disinterest in the world's affairs, along with a disdain of lowland ways. "I don't go to question the good Lord in his wisdom," runs the phrasing attributed to a typical mountaineer, "but I jest cain't see why He put valleys in between the hills."LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
We had got a loaf of home-made bread, and musk and water melons for dessert. For this farmer, a clever and well-disposed man, cult...ivated a large patch of melons for the Hooksett and Concord markets. He hospitably entertained us the next day, exhibiting his hop-fields and kiln and melon-patch, warning us to step over the tight rope which surrounded the latter at a foot from the ground, while he pointed to a little bower at one corner, where it connected with the lock of a gun ranging with the line, and where, he informed us, he sometimes sat in pleasant nights to defend his premises against thieves. We stepped high over the line, and sympathized with our host's on the whole quite human, if not humane, interest in the success of his experiment. That night especially thieves were to be expected, from rumors in the atmosphere, and the priming was not wet. He was a Methodist man, who had his dwelling between the river and Uncannunuc Mountain; who there belonged, and stayed at home there, and by the encouragement of distant political organizations, and by his own tenacity, held a property in his melons, and continued to plant. We suggested melon seeds of new varieties and fruit of foreign flavor to be added to his stock. We had come away up here among the hills to learn the impartial and unbribable influence of Nature. Strawberries and melons grew as well in one man's garden as another's, and the sun lodges as kindly under his hillside,--when we had imagined that she inclined rather to some few earnest and faithful souls whom we know.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
This autumnal festival, when men are gathered in crowds in the streets as regularly and by as natural a law as the leaves cluster ...and rustle by the wayside, is naturally associated in my mind with the fall of the year. The low of cattle in the streets sounds like a hoarse symphony or running bass to the rustling of the leaves. The wind goes hurrying down the country, gleaning every loose straw that is left in the fields, while every farmer lad too appears to scud before it ... to country fairs and cattle-shows, to that Rome among the villages where the treasures of the year are gathered.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
In the winter of '46-7 there came a hundred men of Hyperborean extraction swoop down on to our pond one morning, with many carload...s of ungainly-looking farming tools.... I did not know whether they had come to sow a crop of winter rye, or some other kind of grain recently introduced from Iceland. As I saw no manure, I judged that they meant to skim the land, as I had done, thinking the soil was deep and had lain fallow long enough. They said that a gentleman farmer, who was behind the scenes, wanted to double his money, which, as I understood, amounted to half a million already; but in order to cover each one of his dollars with another, he took off the only coat, ay, the skin itself, of Walden Pond in the midst of a hard winter.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
The very simplicity and nakedness of man's life in the primitive ages imply this advantage, at least, that they left him still but... a sojourner in nature. When he was refreshed with food and sleep, he contemplated his journey again. He dwelt, as it were, in a tent in this world, and was either threading the valleys, or crossing the plains, or climbing the mountain-tops. But lo! men have become the tools of their tools. The man who independently plucked the fruits when he was hungry is become a farmer; and he stood under a tree for shelter, a housekeeper. We no longer camp as for a night, but have settled down on earth and forgotten heaven.... The best works of art are the expression of man's struggle to free himself from this condition, but the effect of our art is merely to make this low state comfortable and that higher state to be forgotten.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
I was more independent than any farmer in Concord, for I was not anchored to a house or farm, but could follow the bent of my geni...us, which is a very crooked one, every moment.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
The weapons with which we have gained our most important victories, which should be handed down as heirlooms from father to son, a...re not the sword and the lance, but the bushwhack, the turf-cutter, the spade, and the bog hoe, rusted with the blood of many a meadow, and begrimed with the dust of many a hard-fought field. The very winds blew the Indian's cornfield into the meadow, and pointed out the way which he had not the skill to follow. He had no better implement with which to intrench himself in the land than a clamshell. But the farmer is armed with plow and spade.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
I think that the farmer displaces the Indian even because he redeems the meadow, and so makes himself stronger and in some respect...s more natural.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
I don't think of myself as a sex symbol or a servant. I think of myself as somebody who knows how to open the door of a 747 in the... dark, upside down, and under water.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »