Hills of the Shatemuc

by Susan Warner

"Yes."

"Goodness! — What's going to be sown here?"

"Wheat."

"And all this work is just to make the ground soft for the seeds!"

"Why wouldn't it do just as well to make holes in the ground and put the seeds in?" said Miss Cadwallader; — "without taking so much trouble?"

"It is not merely to make the ground soft," said Winthrop gravely, while Elizabeth's bright eye glanced at him to mark his behaviour. "The soil might be broken without being so thoroughly turned. If you see, Miss Elizabeth, — the slice taken off by the share is laid bottom upwards."

"I see — well, what is that for?"

"To give it the benefit of the air."

"The benefit of the air! —"

"The air has a sort of enriching and quickening influence upon the soil; — if the land has time and chance, it can get back from the air a great deal of what it lost in the growing of crops."