0 FARM MEMORIES; 1907; American Magazine

One morning I was awakened with a strange new joy in my mind. It

came to me at that moment with indescribable poignancy, the thought of walking barefoot in cool fresh plow furrows, as I had once done when a boy. So vividly the memory came to me--the high, airy world, as it was at that moment, and the boy I was, walking free in the furrows--that the weak tears filled my eyes, the first I had shed in many years.

Then I thought of sitting in quiet thickets in old fence corners, the wood behind me rising still, cool, mysterious, and the fields in front stretching away in illimitable pleasantness. I thought of the good smell of cows at milking. You do not know if you do not know! I thought of the sights and sounds, the heat and sweat of the hayfields. I thought of a certain brook I knew when a boy that flowed among alders and wild parsnips, where I waded with a three foot rod of trout. I thought of all these things as a man thinks of his first love. Oh, I craved the soil! I hungered and thirsted for the earth. I was greedy for growing things.