But labor of the hands, even when pursued to the verge of drudgery, is perhaps never the worst form of idleness. It has a constant and imperishable moral, and to the scholar it yields a classic result. A very

agricola laboriosus was I to travellers bound westward through Lincoln and Wayland to nobody knows where; they sitting at their ease in gigs, with elbows on knees, and reins loosely hanging in festoons; I the home-staying, laborious native of the soil. But soon my homestead was out of their sight and thought. It was the only open and cultivated field for a great distance on either side of the road, so they made the most of it; and sometimes the man in the field heard more of travellers’ gossip and comment than was meant for his ear: “Beans so late! peas so late!”⁠—for I continued to plant when others had begun to hoe⁠—the ministerial husbandman had not suspected it. “Corn, my boy, for fodder; corn for fodder.” “Does he live