But this was all. The
clods of earth, which we so constantly belabored and turned over and
over, were never etherealized into thought. Our thoughts, on the
contrary, were fast becoming cloddish. Our labor symbolized nothing,
and left us mentally sluggish in the dusk of the evening.
Intellectual activity is incompatible with any large amount of bodily
exercise. The yeoman and the scholar--the yeoman and the man of
finest moral culture, though not the man of sturdiest sense and
integrity--are two distinct individuals, and can never be melted or
welded into one substance.
Zenobia soon saw this truth, and gibed me about it, one evening, as
Hollingsworth and I lay on the grass, after a hard day's work.
"I am afraid you did not make a song today, while loading the
hay-cart," said she, "as Burns did, when he was reaping barley."
"Burns never made a song in haying-time," I answered very positively.
"He was no poet while a farmer, and no farmer while a poet."
"And on the whole, which of the two characters do you like best?"
asked Zenobia. "For I have an idea that you cannot combine them any
better than Burns did. Ah, I see, in my mind's eye, what sort of an
individual you are to be, two or three years hence. Grim Silas
Foster is your prototype, with his palm of sole-leather, and his
joints of rusty iron (which all through summer keep the stiffness of
what he calls his winter's rheumatize), and his brain of--I don't
know what his brain is made of, unless it be a Savoy cabbage; but
yours may be cauliflower, as a rather more delicate variety.
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