0 BACK ON THE FARM; part 13; By A Farm Woman Who Went Back; 1930

When I was married I said that at forty I would be ready to die. "By forty," thought twenty, "the thrills of life will be gone. One settles down to a humdrum existence. One's husband decides by that time, no doubt, not to love that old frump any more." Now, looking through the doorway of forty I have no fear of entering. Never has life looked so alluring. Never, I believe, have I meant so much, as partner and comrade, to my husband.

Scoffers there are no doubt, who may say that I have written in effervescence of spirit, that my joy is ephemeral. I know there will be hot, discouraging days this summer at whose end, after hours in the garden, or over a hot cook stove, canning vegetables I picked, I will fall into bed exhausted. Yet deep within me is the conviction--of which, perhaps, I can convince no one--that though my body die, my joy in this farm will go on forever.

By those to whom soil, sunlight and fresh air are but names, by those who love city joys, no enjoyment will be found in these lines, for the source of my thrills can be to them but incomprehensible incidents.

I ask only the disgruntled farmer--who is a farmer at heart--to count his blessings before giving all power to the dollar sign and bowing down to the town man's salary. For that salary, before town demands, is but paper fed to an ever hungry fire, while the average town man, like the average farmer, gets no more than a living, and not so much of a living at that.

In much that I have said, or all, I may be wrong. Too often I have been so to lay any claim to infallibility. This I know:  That every moment I lived in town I was hungry for country sights and smells and sounds; and once more I am content, now that I have my family back in overalls.

The end.