Farming It

"All that day sleighs dashed about town, and wood-sleds drawn by single teams, pairs, and fours thronged the streets. The farmers had been waiting for the snow. This set me thinking. What cleaner, better, fresher farm-work could there be than chopping in the winter woods. That's it! I would do it. Business was not very brisk in the office, and if it were, there was no particular need of a man being a slave to his profession. I had known instances of men actually drying up in my profession, and being, as far as real usefulness is concerned, "Like thin ghosts or disembodied creatures." The one thing I needed to develop a real homelike, woodsy, farmer-like feeling was to get into the woods, and load wood, and smell the delicious fragrance of the pines and the balsam of the freshly cut trunks."