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Down toward Stratford there are flat islands covered with sedge, long rows of weeping-willows, low hazel, hawthorn, and places where "Green Grow the Rushes, O." Then, if the farmer leaves a spot untilled, the dogrose pre-empts the place and showers its petals on the vagrant winds. Meadowsweet, forget-me-nots and wild geranium snuggle themselves below the boughs of the sturdy yews.
The field of vision was filled with churches and chapels, with the palaces of the king and the monk. Behind me the waste lands went rolling away untilled to the brown Toledo mountains. Below, the vigorous current of the Tagus brawled over its rocky bed, and the distant valley showed in its deep rich green what vitality there was in those waters if they were only used.
Farms are untilled, enterprise deadened, invention crippled, education neglected; life is of little value; labor is the badge of servility, laziness the very badge and passport of gentility. Despite the most specious half-measures, despite all efforts to galvanize it, to coax life into it, to sting life into it, the nation has remained stagnant.
Here were great spaces of fertile land lying untilled, broad parks for the ostentation of their proud possessors, while thousands of Romans languished in poverty, and Rome had begun to depend for food largely upon distant realms. There was a law, more than two hundred years old, which forbade any man from holding such large tracts of land. Tiberius thought that this law should be enforced.
Trees remained unfelled, the land untilled, while the men lay on the bare ground about the fort groaning and in misery. Many died, and soon those who remained were so feeble that they had scarce strength to bury the dead or even to crawl to the "common kettle" for their daily measure of porridge. In their misery the men became suspicious and jealous, and once more quarrels were rife.
They were conspicuous by their absence. There were three or four dejected-looking men standing humbly a bit off, three women sitting among the bushes up the slope, that was all. The house where the eviction was to be held was a miserable hovel, whose roof did not amount to much, sitting among untilled fields, with a small dung heap before the door. It was shut up, silent and deserted.
Indeed, nothing could be more dreary than the aspect which Scotland then presented. Her fields lay untilled, her mines unexplored, and her fisheries uncultivated. The Scotch towns were for the most part collections of thatched mud cottages, giving scant shelter to a miserable population. The whole country was desponding, gaunt, and haggard, like Ireland in its worst times.
These facts decided the Association to commence a flower garden, and they located it on a partially level piece of ground behind the Cottage, covering perhaps a half acre, with a chance of future extension by cutting the wood adjoining and cultivating the untilled ground.
The barn was on an untilled farm, the house having been destroyed some years before, and it was not near any other structures, so that, even in a high wind, no damage would result. Tom had filled the barn with inflammable material, and was going to spare no effort to have the test as exhaustive as possible.
Troops were detailed to guard the settlers at their work in the fields, and officers and men were enjoined to use the utmost vigilance. Nevertheless, the Iroquois war-parties broke in at various points, burning and butchering, and spreading such terror that in some districts the fields were left untilled and the prospects of the harvest ruined.
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