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EARLY SPRING IN MASSACHUSETTS.
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frost is out of it and we may safely commit these seeds to it in some places.

Yesterday I walked with a farmer beside his team and saw one furrow turned quite round his field. What noble work is plowing, with the broad and solid earth for material, the ox for fellow-laborer, and the simple, but efficient plow for tool. Work that is not done in any shop, in a cramped position, work that tells, that concerns all men, which the sun shines and the rain falls on, and the birds sing over. You turn over the whole vegetable mould, expose how many grubs, and put a new aspect on the face of the earth. It comes pretty near to making a world. Redeeming a swamp does, at any rate. A good plowman is a terræ-filius. A plowman, we all know, whistles as he drives his team afield.

Often I can give the truest and most interesting account of any adventure I have had, after years have elapsed, for then I am not confused, only the most significant facts surviving in my memory. Indeed, all that continues to interest me after such a lapse of time is sure to be pertinent, and I may safely record all that I remember.

March 28, 1858. I notice the hazel stigmas in a warm hollow just beginning to peep forth. This is an unobserved, but very pretty and in-