Excerpt from A Book of Country Clouds and Sunshine HE Clouds and Sunshine which make up this book are those of life rather than those of nature. The book is, first of all, about the farmer and his ways, about Village life and character. What country life really is, I have tried to make clear, with the use of rose-colored spectacles. Ou the other hand, I have no wish to lay undue stress on the shadows. Country life has its drawbacks yet, to my feeling, a pleasant New England village. Not too far removed from a large town and the railroad, is the best dwelling-place in the world. New England has a charm of variety that few other regions of our country can rival. It has a virile individuality that its own children can never forget. One grows to love its rough hills and wooded mountain ridges, the singing of its streams, its summer heats, its winter storms, even; and no amount of prosperity and honor elsewhere can entirely compensate for this loss. I spoke of a country Village as being the ideal home. You cannot, however, get its aroma and its finer pleasures by mov ing into such a village, - not even if you build a mansion there. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.