First printed in 1942 -- now revised and enlarged to include additional material from The New Yorker and from the author's own department in Harper's Magazine. It is a lively record of an active inquiring mind, whose sense of the ridiculous in no way impairs his appreciation of the life he lives and the people he knows, whether he writes of allergies, animals, the war, economics, cold weather, American phenomena produced by the war, rallies, air raid drills, an Aunt who has married a Japanese, etc. Half-farmer, half literary -- he contemplates the world around him.