When I got out into the long grass the sun was not yet risen, but there were already many colours in the eastern sky, and I made haste to sharpen my scythe, so that I might get to the cutting before the dew should dry.  Some say that it is best to wait till all the dew has risen, so as to get the grass quite dry from the very first.  But, though it is an advantage to get the grass quite dry, yet it is not worth while to wait till the dew has risen.  For, in the first place, you lose many hours of work (and those the coolest), and next—­which is more important—­you lose that great ease and thickness in cutting which comes of the dew.  So I at once began to sharpen my scythe.

There is an art also in the sharpening of a scythe, and it is worth describing carefully.  Your blade must be dry, and that is why you will see men rubbing the scythe-blade with grass before they whet it.  Then also your rubber must be quite dry, and on this account it is a good thing to lay it on your coat and keep it there during all your day’s mowing.  The scythe you stand upright, with the blade pointing away from you, and you put your left hand firmly on the back of the blade, grasping it:  then you pass the rubber first down one side of the blade-edge and then down the other, beginning near the handle and going on to the point and working quickly and hard.  When you first do this you will, perhaps, cut your hand; but it is only at first that such an accident will happen to you.

To tell when the scythe is sharp enough this is the rule.  First the stone clangs and grinds against the iron harshly; then it rings musically to one note; then, at last, it purrs as though the iron and stone were exactly suited.  When you hear this, your scythe is sharp enough; and I, when I heard it that June dawn, with everything quite silent except the birds, let down the scythe and bent myself to mow.

When one does anything anew, after so many years, one fears very much for one’s trick or habit.  But all things once learnt are easily recoverable, and I very soon recovered the swing and power of the mower.  Mowing well and mowing badly—­or rather not mowing at all—­are separated by very little; as is also true of writing verse, of playing the fiddle, and of dozens of other things, but of nothing more than of believing.  For the bad or young or untaught mower without tradition, the mower Promethean, the mower original and contemptuous of the past, does all these things:  He leaves great crescents of grass uncut.  He digs the point of the scythe hard into the ground with a jerk.  He loosens the handles and even the fastening of the blade.  He twists the blade with his blunders, he blunts the blade, he chips it, dulls it, or breaks it clean off at the tip.  If any one is standing by he cuts him in the ankle.  He sweeps up into the air wildly, with nothing to resist his stroke.  He drags up earth with the grass, which is like making the meadow bleed.  But the good mower who does things just as they should be done and have been for a hundred thousand years, falls into none of these fooleries.  He goes forward very steadily, his scythe-blade just barely missing the ground, every grass falling; the swish and rhythm of his mowing are always the same.