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Today it is a pleasure to share selections from “Rural Culture” in “The Tablets” by Amos Bronson Alcott (vegan), in which he discusses the blessings of simple country life, living in harmony with nature, and earning a livelihood by sustaining human life. The Garden Rural Culture “‘Nor need the muse to palaces resort, Or bring examples only from the court, The country strives to do our subject right, And gardening is the gentleman’s delight.’ I consider it the best part of an education to have been born and brought up in the country; the arts of handicraft and husbandry coming by mother wit, like the best use of books, the language one speaks. There is virtue in country houses, in gardens and orchards, in fields, streams and groves, in rustic recreations and plain manners that neither cities nor universities enjoy. Nor is it creditable to the teaching that so few college graduates take to husbandry and rural pursuits. Held subordinate to thought, as every calling should be, these promote intellectual freshness and moral vigor. They have been made classic by the genius of antiquity; are recreations most becoming to men of every profession and rank in life: ‘Books, wise discourse, garden and fields, And all the joys that unmixed nature yields.’ Rural influences seem to be most desirable, if not necessary, for cherishing the home virtues, especially in a community like ours, where, by prejudices of tradition, we seek culture more through books and universities than from that closer contact with men and things to which newer communities owe so much, which agriculture promotes, and for which the classic authors chiefly deserve to be studied. Men follow what they love, and the love of rural enjoyments is almost universal. Everyone likes the country whose tastes are cultivated in the least, and who enjoys what is primitive and pure. […]”
