Read "The Dewy Morn" by Richard Jefferies online for free on Textopian. Full text with search, annotations, highlights, and AI-powered reading aids.
But some thought it strange that the House of Cornleigh should fear the serfs upon its wide domain -- those serfs who had enjoyed for so many centuries its fostering care. Why fear those poor helpless cottagers whose destinies they had swayed so long -- whose hearts they had doubtless gained by centuries of kindness?
Oh foolish House of Cornleigh! Foolish Houses of Cornleigh -- very much in the plural, for they are a multitude in number -- not to have made friends with Flesh and Blood, instead of grasping so blindly only at the mud underneath; neglecting and utterly ignoring the hearts that beat in the homesteads, laying hands so ambitiously on the mere surface of the earth.