Now the point of
view as to the outside world means a great deal in life. Countrymen do
not love nature as townsmen love it. Their affection is deeper but less
emotional, like old friendships, undemonstrative but everlasting.
Countrymen see without looking, and say very little about it. Townsmen
in the country look long and say what they have seen, but they miss many
things. A farmer stands stolidly among the graces of his frisky lambs
and seems to miss their meaning, but this is because the manners
cultivated in his calling do not allow the expression of feeling. It is
all in his soul somewhere, deeply at home, but impossible to utter. The
townsman looks eagerly, expresses a great deal, expresses it well, but
misses the spirit from want of a background to his picture. One must
know the whole round of the year in the country to catch the spirit of
any season and perceive whence it comes and whither it goes.
On the other hand, the countryman in town thinks that there is no beauty
of the world left for him to see, because the spirit there is a spirit
of the hour and not of the season, and natural beauty has to be caught
in evanescent appearances--a florist's window full of orchids in place of
his woodlands--and his mind is too slow to catch these.
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