It is no use my explaining again and again that in a country like this,
where everybody works, nobody over works, and that when the few hours of
obligatory labor are passed in the mornings, people need not do anything
unless they choose. Their working-dresses are very simple, but in all
sorts of gay colors, like those you saw in the Greek play at Harvard,
with straw hats for the men, and fillets of ribbon for the girls, and
sandals for both. I speak of girls, for most of the married women are at
home gardening, or about the household work, but men of every age work in
the fields. The earth is dear to them because they get their life from it
by labor that is not slavery; they come to love it every acre, every
foot, because they have known it from childhood; and I have seen old men,
very old, pottering about the orchards and meadows during the hours of
voluntary work, and trimming them up here and there, simply because they
could not keep away from the place, or keep their hands off the trees and
bushes.
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