A Wandering Carpenter knew it, and taught it, twenty centuries ago.
"The next house beyond the ridge," said the toothless old woman, pointing with a long finger, "is the Clarks'.

You can't miss it," and I thought she looked at me oddly.
I had been walking briskly for some three miles, and it was with keen expectation that I now mounted the ridge and saw the farm for which I was looking, lying there in the valley before me.

It was altogether a wild and beautiful bit of country--stunted cedars on the knolls of the rolling hills, a brook trailing its way among alders and willows down a long valley, and shaggy old fields smiling in the sun.

As I came nearer I could see that the only disharmony in the valley was the work (or idleness) of men.

A broken mowing-machine stood in the field where it had been left the summer before, rusty and forlorn, and dead weeds marked the edges of a field wherein the spring ploughing was now only half done.