town-craft

Updated: July 2, 2025

I have gray-haired neighbors around me who have come to a hardy old age upon their little farms, buffeting all storms, petting the cattle which have come down to them from ten generations of short-lived kine, gone by, trailing ancient vines, that have seen a quarter of a century of life, over their door-steps, turning over soil, every cheery season of May, from which they have already gathered fifty harvests; and I cannot but regard their serene philosophy, and their quiet, thankful, and Christian enjoyment of the bounties of Nature, as something quite as much to be envied as the distinctions of town-craft.

Various - The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 81, July, 1864