All the children helped to plant the peas, which we placed carefully and evenly, an inch apart, in the row, and covered with two inches of soil, the rows being two feet distant one from another.  I had decided to plant chiefly McLean’s Little Gem, because they needed no stakes or brush for support.  We were almost through our task when, happening to look toward the house, I saw my wife standing in the doorway, a framed picture.

“Dinner,” she called, in a voice as sweet to me as that of the robin singing in the cherry-tree over her head.

The children stampeded for the house, Winnie crying:  “Hurry up, mamma, for right after dinner papa will set the great brush-pile on fire, and we’re going to dance round it like Indians.  You must come out, too.”

CHAPTER XXIII

A BONFIRE AND A FEAST

It amused and interested me to see upon the children’s faces such an eager expectancy as they hurried through our midday meal.  Nothing greater than a bonfire was in prospect, yet few costly pleasures could have afforded them such excitement.  I found myself sharing in their anticipation to a degree that surprised me, and was led to ask myself why it is that outdoor pursuits often take so strong a hold upon the fancy.  I recalled traits shown by one of my former employers.  He was a gray-headed man, possessing great wealth and an elegant city home, while his mind was occupied by a vast and complicated business.  When he learned that I was going to the country, he would often come to me, and, with kindling eyes and animated tones, talk of his chickens, cows, fruit-trees and crops.  He proved that the best product of his farm was the zest it brought him into his life—­a zest that was failing in his other occupations and interests.  What was true of him I knew to be equally so of many others to whom wealth brings no greater luxury than the ability to indulge in expensive farming.  A lifetime in the city does not destroy the primal instinct which leads men to the soil nor does a handsome dividend from stocks give the unalloyed pleasure awakened by a basket of fresh eggs or fruit.  This love of the earth is not earthiness, but has been the characteristic of the best and greatest minds.  Washington would turn from the anxieties of a campaign and the burdens of state to read, with absorbing interest, the reports of the agent who managed his plantation, and to write out the minutest details for the overseer’s guidance.

In my limited way and sphere I was under the influence of the same impulses; and, as I looked around the table at those so dear to me, I felt that I had far more at stake.  I had not come back to Nature merely to amuse myself or to gratify a taste, but to co-work with her in fulfilling the most sacred duties.  With the crops of the coming years these children must be nourished and fitted for their part in life, and I felt that all my faculties must be employed to produce the best results from my open-air toil.