fil | iil Beatiate pe Hac TING ee ae peas EDGEWOOD EDITION ¥y « VOLUME VII RES be ; R OVEMENT THE WORKS OF DONALD G. MITCHELL OUT-OF-TOWN PLACES WITH HINTS FOR THEIR IMPROVEMENT A REISSUE OF ‘‘ RURAL STUDIES”’ CHARLES SCRIBNER’S SONS NEW YORK » * ¥ * 1907 Copyright, 1867, 1884, by DONALD G. MITCHELL Copyright, 1907, by Ba chia piico, CHARLES SCRIBNER’S SONS PREFATORY NOTE I HAVE changed the name of this volume,— not with the view of deceiving anybody, or of putting a new blazon upon old wares,—but be- cause I wish to express, so far as I can, in the title, the very practical aim of the book, and to dispossess the reader at the start of any notion that it is made up by a mere literary grouping of ruralities. In the Preface of 1867—which was the date of its first issue—I said,—“Its aim is to stimu- late those who live in the country, or who love the country, to a fuller and wider range of thinking about the means of making their homes enjoyable—rather than to lay down any definite rules by which this may be accom- plished ; and I have especially sought to excite the ambition of those holders of humble estates, who believe that nothing can be done in the way of adornment of country property, except under the eye of accomplished gardeners. The book is a tract for homeliness; and I hope it may make country proselytes.” Vv PREFATORY NOTE I have still faith that the simplicities it teaches, and its common-sense suggestions, may have good influence—notwithstanding the great zesthetic gains which have been made dur- ing the last fifteen years, in all that relates to the equipment of suburban homes: and I am ‘quite sure that the intelligent and tasteful in- terpretation of the text which has been made by the drawings of my friend Mr. E. C. Gard- ner, of Springfield, Mass., will give wholly new force and piquancy to the suggestions I have urged. D. G. M. Epcewoop, April, 1884. vi CONTENTS | AN OLD-STYLE FARM : . . . eons Il ADVICE FOR LACKLAND : ‘ ° 4 27 POMOLOGISTS AND COMMON PEOPLE ° ee LACKLAND MAKES A BEGINNING. . A 39 LACKLAND’S HOUSE PLANS ae Pet . 49 LACKLAND’s GARDENER. . . . . ~~ 64 APiG ANDACOW . : . ° . e%O ON GATEWAYS . . ‘ ° . . 82 GATEWAYS AND RURAL CARPENTRY . eek VILLAGE AND COUNTRY ROAD-SIDE . . 99 Il WAY-SIDE HINTS ; ‘ A ‘ : eget (IT | TALK ABOUT PORCHES : : A ; . 109 ON NOT DOING ALL AT ONCE ; ; 120 PLOUGHING AND DRILLED CROPS F ‘ v:129 ROADS AND SHADE : ; oe angle AOE ENGLISH AND AMERICAN HEDGING . .__.«. :142 VILAGE COREENG OO ee ess? 453 Vii CONTENTS RAILWAY GARDENING ‘ - s A . 162 LANDSCAPE TREATMENT OF RAILWAYS 6 6S IV LAYING OUT OF GROUNDS . . . Vb ¢ 28 LANDSCAPE GARDENING . . . . . 179 FARM LANDSCAPE . ; ee ee ean eee LANDS NOT FARMED . x : a Ad iB CITY AND TOWN PARKS : sat Mew PLACE FOR PARKS ‘ ; Z ‘ . 208 EQUIPMENT OF_PUBLIC GARDENS . pe a BURYING-GROUNDS . : A pee . 220 V MR. URBAN AND A COUNTRY HOUSE . = 229 REAL ESTATE PURCHASE. ; i Chips? 2. COST AND RETURNS OF FIFTY ACRES gf QUESTION OF LOCALITIES. ; = «250 TESTIMONY OF EXPERTS . ... . i) oeee RESULTS ‘OF INQUIRY Cee aa so eae HOUSES AND REPAIRS : ; 5 . 276 SITE AND. MATERIAL 202 Oa FORM AND COLOR. Re pee ee nee ea A Se 2 | Mr. URBAN’S PURCHASE . : u ‘ oe A SUNNY HOUSE ‘ ‘ ; ‘ A <3 CONCLUSION . a H ode ° gorse AN OLD-STYLE FARM —I chanced to be the owner of a wild, unkempt, slatternly farm, of three or four hundred acres in extent, amid the rocky fastnesses of eastern Connecticut. The town- ship in which it lay was a scattered wilder- ness of a settlement, lying along the Hartford and New London turnpike. There was a toll-gate (I remember that); and I have a fancy that the toll-gatherer was a sallow- faced shoemaker with club-feet, who some- times made his appearance with a waxed-end in his mouth, and a flat-headed hammer in his hand. He hardly wields the hammer any more; and his last waxed-end must long ago have been drawn tight, and clipped away. There was a wild common over which the November winds swept with a pestilent force, with nothing to break them, except a pair of twin churches. One of these was Congrega- tional—severely doric, with square-headed windows, painted columns, and a cupola for 3 . twenty odd years ago—more or less OUT-OF-TOWN PLACES ornamentation. The other was Episcopal, with sharp-headed windows, and three or four crazy-looking turrets; but the paint upon this latter was nearly worn away by the storm- gusts that beat unbroken over the common. I am compelled to say too that the services were only occasional in this gothic tabernacle; and regret exceedingly to add that, after a fitful and spasmodic life, the Episcopal society which maintained nominal ownership of this tur- reted temple made over its interest and debts to certain worldly parties, and the sharp- headed windows now shed their light upon “town meetings,” and the late church is abased to the uses of a town hall. It must be said, that the rural residents of New England have no large or growing appreciation of the beau- tiful Litany. They like long sermons and a “talking out’ in prayer. You or I may feel differently ; but the men and women of those retired districts, where books and newspapers rarely come, want to hear on a Sunday what the parson will say—not only in his sermon, but in his invocations. The doric meeting-house, however, gloried in a thick, white sheen of paint. The blinds were green to a fault. No exterior mark of prosperity seemed wanting but a flanking line 4 AN OLD-STYLE FARM of horse-sheds, the lack of which upon that bare waste was a terrible source of discomfort to the poor brutes who, after a drive of three, four, or even five miles, stood shivering in the December weather under the lee of the fences. A good, kind parson, who presided over the parish in the days of which I speak, was earn- est in his appeals for shelter to the poor brutes, (my little bay mare often shivering among them,) but the charitable enthusiasm of the good minister counted for nothing; and to this day, as I am credibly informed, the ‘‘contem- plated sheds” remain unbuilt. There was a tavern, lying to the northward, along the turnpike; and if I remember rightly, the tavern-keeper was a deacon—a staid man, of course, who kept an orderly house, and whose daughters, in flamboyant ribbons, were among the belles of the parish. The father was, I believe, a most worthy man; but his rusty brown wig showed badly beside the great flock of golden curls that flanked him in his meeting-house pew. His boys were ab- sentees, and addicted to horse-trading. There was a cooper’s shop upon the sprawl- ing street, in which a great clatter and bang were kept up every work-day upon shad-bar- rels. There was a carriage-repairing shop; 5 OUT-OF-TOWN PLACES and another way-side smithy, where time and time again, I have watched the heaving of the bellows, and the flying of the sparks, as the grimy workman pounded out the iron shoes, for which “Debby” stood patiently in waiting. There was a green country store, where “domestics” :were sold, and West India sugars, and hoes—‘“‘Ames’ best cast-steel’”— and, I greatly fear, occasional tipple. It was burned down long ago; ten years after, I saw the yawning, ragged cellar, and a giant growth of stramonium springing from the door-step. There was also somewhere along this dreary street a manufactory of musical instruments —whether of harps or organs I cannot justly say; but I have been given to understand that the manufactory has since, under zealous and spirited management, grown into a _ great musical mstitute, where young misses in white (with blue sashes) woo the muses with a thundering success. But more distinctly than the manufactory—whatever it may have been —I remember a little brook, that stole away in the meadows thereabout under clumps of alder, under lines of willows, under plank bridgelets, and how, on many a May day my line drifted on into dark pools, until some 6 eee eS eee ee 4 ‘ ; 3 y "9 ,, AN OLD-STYLE FARM swift strike gave warning of a venturesome, golden-spotted swimmer that presently tossed and flounced in my creel. I profess no great love for music—no knowledge of it even; but the whizzing of a reel which a pound trout will make at the end of thirty feet of taper line is to me very charming—charming in those old days when the woods and meadows were new, and charming now when the woods and the meadows are old. Well, well, I be- gan to tell the story of a farm, and here I am idling along the borders of a brook! The toll-gate, the churches, the tavern, the store lay strewn along a high-road, three miles away from the valley-farm, of which in those days I was busy occupant. And yet so bare of trees was the interval, that from many a nook under the coppices of the pasture-land I could see the twin churches, the tavern, and, with a glass, detect even a stray cow, or the lumbering coach which from time to time wended along the high-road of the village. The farm was suitably divided (as the old advertisements were wont to say) into tillage, meadow, and pasture-lands. This distribu- tion of parts implied that the meadows would furnish enough hay in ordinary seasons for the winter’s keep of such and so many ani- 7 OUT-OF-TOWN PLACES mals, as the pastures carried in good condition through the summer; and the arable land was supposed equal to the growth of such grain and vegetables as would suffice for man and beast throughout the year. It was an old, lazy reckoning of capabilities, which implied little or no progress, and which took no account of any systematic rotation. I never see a farm advertised under the formula I have named —suitably divided into tillage, mowing, and pasture-land—but I feel sure that the adver- tiser is a respectable, old-fashioned gentle- man, who keeps a long-tailed black coat for Sundays and training-days, and who has in- herited his agricultural opinions from a very - dull and _ stiff-necked ancestry. Such an- nouncements—and they are to be seen not unfrequently in the journals—impress me very much as the advertisement of a desirable dwelling might do—‘“suitably divided into cooking, eating, and sleeping quarters.” There are, to be sure, rough pasture-lands strewn with rocks, or full of startling ine- qualities of surface, which must retain for an indefinite period their office for simple graz- ing purposes; but, with rare exceptions, there are not anywhere in the northeastern States any considerable stretches of meadow capable 8 AN OLD-STYLE FARM of growing the better English grasses, which are not susceptible of improvement under oc- casional tillage. Draining, indeed, may be first needed, and a scarifying with the harrow, to root out the old mosses and foul growth; but after this, a clean lift of the plow and judi- cious dressing will work wonders. But, to return, (for I wish to make the picture of an old-fashioned farm complete, ) there were mossy meadows lying along the borders of a great romping millstream, which had been mown for forty years without inter- mission; here and there, where these meadows lifted into gravelly mounds, patches of plow land had been taken up at intervals of five or eight years, and by dint of heavy, laborious cartage of the scant manures from the barn- yard, over the intervening meadow “swales,” had shown their periodic growth of corn or potatoes, these followed by oats—more or less rank as the season was wet or dry—and again, on the following year by clover, which in its turn was succeeded by red-top and timo- thy—upon which the wild meadow-growth steadily encroached. There was, of course, the “barn-lot,” of which all old farmers boasted, maintained in a certain degree of foodful succulence and 2 OUT-OF-TOWN PLACES luxuriant fertility by reason of the leakage and waste which it inevitably secured, and whose richness was due rather to lack of care than to skill. There were intervals too of meadow upland, through which some little rivulet from the pasture hill-side meandered on its way to the larger brook of the lowland, and which were kept in verdant wealth (no thanks to any human manager) by the re- freshing influences of the rivulets alone. Four or five such straggling brooklets murmured down from the pasture high-lands, and a Dev- onshire farmer would have given to each one a wide and wealth-giving distribution over acres and acres of the slanting meadows. But there was nothing of this. They watered their little rod-wide margin of succulent grasses, then dropped away into some marshy flat, where the flags and rushes grew ram- pantly, until these too gave place to alders, poison sumacs, soft maples and black-ash trees. The fences were as motley as the militia- men’s coats on a first Monday of May. From time to time some previous tenant or owner had devoted “‘fall leisure” to the erection of a wall—mostly in continuation of a great range of barrier which separated the hill-lands from 10 Ca ee ae AN OLD-STYLE FARM the flat. In this erection each owner’s views of economy (no other views being recog- nized) had taken wide divergence. Thus, one had given a circular sweep to his trail, for the sake of inclosing some tempting smooth spot upon the lowest slope of the hills; another had made a flanking movement in the other direc- tion, for the sake of excluding some unfortu- nate little group of innocent rocks. But the sinners and the well-doers, on the score of the walling, must have long before gone to their account, since the stones were all mossy, and the frequent gaps had been blocked up by lop- ping over some vigorous young hickory or chestnut which had started from the base of the wall. But even this rustic device had not given full security, for with settlements and the “bulging” under frosts, this great line of bar- rier was no proof against the clambering pro- pensities of the sheep; and the whole line of fence had been topped with long poles, kept in their places by cross stakes firmly driven into the ground and sustaining the “riders” at the point of intersection. To complete the fence picture, I have to add to those half-lopped hickories in the gaps—to those bulging tumors of stone—to those gaunt over-riding poles— ‘ If OUT-OF-TOWN PLACES a great array of blackberry briers, of elders, of dog-willows, of dried stems of golden-rod, of raspberries, and of pretentious wild-cher- ries. Still further, I must mark down a great sprawling array of the scattered wall, in some half-dozen spots, where adventurous hunters had made a mining foray after some unfortu- nate woodchuck or rabbit. So much for the average New England walling in retired districts twenty years ago. Is it much better now? As for the wooden fencing, there stretched across the meadow by the road a staggering line of “posts and rails” —one post veering southward the next veering northward—a wholly frightful line, which was like nothing so much as a file of tipsy sol- diers making vain efforts to keep “eyes right.” In the woodlands and upon the borders of the farm, were old, lichen-covered Virginia fences, sinking rail by rail into the earth; luxuriant young trees were shooting up in the angles, brambles were overgrowing them, and poisonous vines—the Rhus Tosxicodendron among them (which country people call mer- cury, ivy, and I know not what names beside) —and this entire range of exterior fence was gone over each springtime—April being the usual month—and made effective, by lopping I2 CO a ee ee Se eee epee AN OLD-STYLE FARM upon it stich lusty growth as may have sprung up the season past. It is afflictive to think what waste of natural resources is committed in this way every year by the scrubby farmers of New England. The stock equipment of this farm of nearly four hundred acres, consisted of twelve cows, some six head of young stock, two yoke of oxen, a pair of horses, and a hundred and fifty | sheep. I blush even now as I write down the tale of such poor equipment for a farm which counted at least two hundred and seventy acres of open land—the residue being wood, or impenetrable swamp. And it is still more melancholy to reflect that the portion of the land which aided most in the sustenance of this meagre stock, was that which was most nearly in a state of nature. I speak of those newly cleared pasture-lands from which the wood had been removed within ten years. In giving this description of a farm of twenty years ago, I feel sure that I am describing the available surface of a thousand farms in New England to-day. We boast indeed of our thrift and enterprise, but these do not work in the direction of land culture—at least not in the way of that liberal and generous cul- ture which insures the largest product. I 13 OUT-OF-TOWN PLACES doubt greatly if there be any people on the face of the earth, equally intelligent, who farm so poorly as the men of New England; and there are tens of thousands less intelligent who manage their lands infinitely better. I do not quite understand why the American character, which has shown such wonderful aptitude for thrift in other directions, should have shown so little in the direction of agriculture. I feel quite confident that seven out of ten of the most accomplished and successful nursery- men, gardeners, and farmers in the country, are of foreign birth, or of foreign parentage. Within the limits of my own experience, I find it infinitely more difficult to secure a good American farmer, than to secure a good Scotch or even an Irish one. And I observe with not a little shame, that while the American is dis- posed to make up the tale of his profits by sharp bargains, the Scotch are as much dis- posed to make it up by liberal treatment of the land. Why is this? The American is not illiberal by nature; a thousand proofs lie to the contrary; but by an unfortunate traditional belief he is disposed to count the land only a rigorous step-dame from which all possible benefit is to be wrested, and the least possible return made. 14 ER ae PO re ee ee ee oe =, * AN OLD-STYLE FARM Is the Congressional grant for agricultural colleges to work a change in this belief in the minds of those who hold the great mass of the land under control? Not surely until the newly started colleges shall have made some more vigorous practical demonstration than they have made thus far. The bearings of science upon agriculture were well taught pre- viously under the wing of the established uni- versities; what the public had reason to hope from the new endowment was such practical exhibit of the economic value of a thorough system in tillage and management, as should carry conviction to the popular mind. As yet we wait in vain. Looking at results thus far, I am strongly of the opinion that a few thou- sands devoted to the gratuitous distribution of one or two sterling agricultural newspapers would have worked more good to the farming interests of the community, than the millions which have been committed to the wisdom of the several State legislatures. I have no hope that these views will meet the concurrence of those who have present control of the funds; nor do I mean to express a doubt of the hon- esty and good intentions of those who have become the supervisors of this great trust; but I am strongly of the assurance that the 15 OUT-OF-TOWN PLACES common sense of the country is largely dis- posed to ask of the scientific gentlemen who have been so largely the recipients of this con- gressional bounty some practical demonstration upon the land, of the faith they hold and teach. I come back to the old farm, with its meagre stock and its wide acres. Of course there was something to be sold. Farmers never get on without that. First of all, came the “veals’’ —selling in that day for some two cents a pound, live weight. (They now sell in the New York market for ten.) This bridged over the spring costs, until the butter came from the first growth of the pastures. —How well I remember tossing myself from bed at an hour before sunrise (Seth by previous orders having the horse and wagon ready), and by candle-light seeing to the pack- ing of the spring butter—the firkins being en- wrapped in dewy grass, fresh cut—and then setting forth upon the long drive (twelve miles) to the nearest market town. What a drive it was! Five miles on, I saw the early people stirring and staring at me, as they washed their faces in the basin at the well. Then came woods, and silence, but a strange odorous freshness in the air—possibly some near coal-pit gave its creosotic fumes, not 16 AN OLD-STYLE FARM unpleasant ; some owl, in the swamps I passed, lifted its melancholy hoot; further on I saw some early riser driving his cows to pasture; still further I cdught sight of children at play before some farm-house door, and the sun being fairly risen, I knew their breakfasts were waiting them within. After this, I passed occasional teams upon the road, and gave a “good morning” to the drivers. Then came the toll-gate: I won- dered if the day’s profits would be equal to the toll? After this came the milk wagons whisking by me, and I envied them their short rounds; at last (the sun being now two hours high) came sight of the market town— city, I should say; for the legislature had given it long before the benefit of the title; and on the score of church spires, and taverns, and shops, and newspapers, and wickedness, it deserved the name. I wish I could catch sight once more of the old gentleman (a good grocer as the times went) who plunged his thumb-nails into my golden rolls of butter, and said: “We ’re buy- ing pooty fair butter at twelve and a half cents, but seein’ as it’s you, we'll say thirteen cents a pound for this”; and he cleaned his thumb-nail upon the breech of his trousers. 17 OUT-OF-TOWN PLACES I amnot romancing here, I am only telling a plain, straightforward story of my advent, some twenty years ago, upon a summer’s morning into the city of N—. I recall now vividly the detestably narrow and muddy streets—the poor horse, (I had bought it of the son of our deacon,) wheezing with his twelve-mile drive—my own empty faint stom- ach—the glimpses of the beautiful river be- tween the hills—and the golden butter which I must needs sell to my friend the grocer at thirteen cents. I hope he had never any qualms of conscience; but it is a faint hope to entertain. I knew a single naively honest one; but to him I never offered anything for sale. I feared he might succumb to that temptation. After the butter, (counting some forty odd pounds in weight per week,) the next most important sale was that of the lambs and wool. The lambs counted ordinarily—leaving out the losses of the newly dropped ones, by crows’ and foxes—some hundred or more. And 1 Enthusiastic bird-lovers will learn, may be with sur- prise, that crows are capable of this mischief, but it is even true. Their villainous method is to pluck out the eyes of the newly born innocents, and then leave their prey until death and putrefaction shall have ripened it to their taste. Only extreme hunger, however, will drive 18 AN OLD-STYLE FARM nice lambs they were; far better than the half I find in the markets to-day. Nothing puts sweeter and more delicate flesh upon young lambs than that luxuriant growth of herbage which springs from freshly cleared high-lying wood-lands. In piquancy and richness, it is as much beyond the lambs of stall-fed sheep, as the racy mutton of the Dartmoors is beyond the turnip-fatted wethers of the downs of - Hampshire. And yet these lambs were deliv- ered to the butcher at an ignoble price; I think a dollar and a half a head was all that could be secured for animals which in the city would bring to-day nearly five dollars. The wool was bought up by speculators in that time, and the speculators were not ex- travagant. I remember very well driving off upon a summer’s afternoon, mounted upon twelve great sacks of fleeces, and being rather proud of my receipts, at the rate of twenty- eight cents per pound. (The same wool would have brought two years since eighty cents per pound.) After we disposed of the butter and the the crow to such game. I think I have never felt more murderously inclined than when I have seen upon a bleak day of April one of these black harpies perched upon the head of its faintly struggling victim, and delib- erately plucking away the eyes from the socket. 19 OUT-OF-TOWN PLACES wool, and during the late autumn months, came the cartage of wood—some eight miles —to a port upon the river, at which four dol- lars per cord was paid for good oak wood, and five for hickory. At present rates of labor, these are sums which would not pay for the cutting and cartage. I must not forget the swine—two or three venerable porkers, and in an adjoining pen a brood of young shoats—that would equip themselves in great layers of fat, from the whey during the hot months, and the yellow ears of corn with the first harvesting of Octo- ber. Day after day, through May, through June, came the unwearied round of milking, of driving to pasture, of plowing, of planting; day after day the sun beat hotter on the mead- ows, on the plowland, on the reeking sty; day after day the buds unfolded—the pink of orchards hung in flowery sheets over the scat- tered apple trees; the dogwood threw out its snowy burden of blossoms from the edges of the wood; the oaks showed their velvety tufts, and with midsummer there was a world of green and of silence—broken only by an occa- sional ‘Gee, Bright!’ of the teamster, or the cluck of a matronly hen, or hum of bees, or the murmur of the brook. All this inviting to 20 AN OLD-STYLE FARM a very dreamy indolence, which, I must con- fess, was somehow vastly enjoyable. Nothing to see? Lo, the play of light and shade over the distant hills, or the wind, mak- ing tossed and streaming wavelets on the rye. Nothing to hear? Wait a moment and you shall listen to the bursting melodious rounde- lay of the merriest singer upon earth—the black and white coated Bob-o’-Lincoln, as he rises on easy wing, floats in the sunshine, and overflows with song, then sinks, as if ex- hausted by his brilliant solo, to some swaying twig of the alder bushes. Nothing to hope? The maize leaves through all their close ser- ried ranks are rustling with the promise of golden corn. Nothing to conquer? There are the brambles, the roughnesses, the ine- qualities, the chill damp earth, the whole teeming swamp-land. I have tried to outline the surroundings and appointments of many a back country farmer of New England to-day. I am sure the draw- ing is true, because it is from the life. I seem to see such an one now on one of those May mornings an hour before sunrise. It is his market day, and the old sorrel mare is har- nessed, and tied to the hitch-post. The wagon is of antique shape, bulging out in front and 21 OUT-OF-TOWN PLACES - rear, and with half-rounded ends. The high- backed seat is supported upon a V-shaped framework of ash, and covered over with a yellow Buffalo skin, of which the fur is half worn away. An oaken firkin is presently lifted in, with a white linen cloth shut down under its cover, and a corner of the buffalo turned over it to shield it from the dust and the sunshine. Then comes a bushel basket of eggs, packed in rowen hay; next the great clothes-basket, covered with a table cloth, in which lie the two hind quarters of a veal killed yesterday, (the fore quarters being kept for home consumption). In the corner of the wagon is thrust a squat jug—its stopper being a corn-cob wrapped around with newspaper —which is to be filled with ‘Port o’ reek” molasses. Then, at last, Jerusha, the wife, in silver spectacles, and Sunday gown, clam- bers in—a stout woman, with her waist belted in, after a loose sausage-like way—who has a last word for her “darter” Sally Ann, and then another last word, and who cautions Enos (her husband) about “turnin’ too short,” and who asks if the mare “an’t gittin’ kind o’ frisky with the spring weather?” So they drive away—Enos and Jerushy. They talk of the new “howsen” along the way; 22 AN OLD-STYLE FARM they discuss the last Sunday’s sermon: Enos says, “I ’ve heerd that Hosea Wood is a cortin’ Malviny Smith.” “Don’t b’lieve a word on ’t, Enos. No sich a thing. Did you put a baitin for the hoss in the waggin, Enos?” “No, I vum! I forgot it,” says Enos. “What a plaguey careless creeter you ’re a gittin’ to be, Enos!” And so the good worthy couple jog on. In town, the jug is filled; the stout matron peers through her spectacles at tapes, thread, needles, and a stout “caliker’” gown (fast col- ors) for Sally Ann. Pater-familias sees to the filling of the flat jug, he makes a fair sale of the two quarters of veal, he buys a few “garding’’ seeds, a new rake, a scythe snathe, and dickers for a grindstone—unavailingly. Two hours before nightfall, the good couple jog homeward again, with humdrum quietude. It is not such a scene of domesticity as I ever forecast for my own enjoyment. I be- lieved, and still believe, that the dead life upon the back country New England farms, is capa- ble of being stirred into a live life. Over and over I forecast the day when the inequalities should be smoothed, the swamps drained, the _woodlands cleared up, (leaving only here and 23 OUT-OF-TOWN PLACES there some clump of giant oaks or chestnuts about a loitering brooklet,) the cattle quad- rupled in number, the muck-lands yielding their harvests to be composted with the con- centrated manures of the town, the very walls to be straightened (of which a beginning had been made), and such stir and movement and growth and cumulative fertility as should make the neighborhood open its eyes wide, and stare to a purpose. I saw the wasting rivulets dammed and distributing their fer- tilizing flow over acres of the side-land; I saw the maple swamps giving place to wide stretches of heavy meadow; I saw the wild growth of the pasture-lands cut and piled and burned, and all the hillsides glittering with a new wealth of green. But it was not to be. In the very heat of the endeavor, there came a flattering invitation to change the scene of labor and of observation, a single night only being given for decision. I remember the night as if only this morning’s sun broke it, and kindled it into day. One way, the brooks, the oaks, the crops, the memories, the homely hopes, lured me; the other way, I saw splendid and enticing phan- tasmagoria—London Bridge, St. Paul's, Prince Hal, Fleet Street, Bolt Court, Kenil- 24 AN OLD-STYLE FARM worth, wild ruins. Next morning I gave the key of the corn-crib to the foreman, and bade the farm-land adieu. Within a month I was strolling over the fields of Lancashire, wondering at that or- derly, systematic cultivation of which New England had not dreamed—wondering at the grand results of this liberal and generous cul- ture, and more than ever disgusted at the pinched and starveling way in which my coun- trymen were cheating the land of its opulent privilege of production. I have written this little descriptive episode of a farm-life in New England to serve as the background for certain illustrative hints toward the amendment of rural life—whether in matters of good husbandry, or of good taste; I have furthermore ventured upon cer- tain homeliness of detail in these opening pages, to show that I may have privilege of speech. There is no manner of work done upon a New England farm to which some day I have not put my hand—whether it be chopping wood, laying wall, sodding a coal-pit, cradling oats, weeding corn, shearing sheep, or sowing turnips. Therefore, in any future references which I may make in the course of these 25 OUT-OF-TOWN PLACES papers to farm life, I trust that my good readers will credit me with a certain connais- sance de cause. 26 ADVICE FOR LACKLAND ADVICE FOR LACKLAND POMOLOGISTS AND COMMON PEOPLE proper are the best advisers of a man who wishes—as so many do in these times— to establish his little home in the country, and to make it charming with fruits and flowers, and all manner of green things. I think that the professional tastes or successes of one de- voted to Horticulture might lead him into a great many extravagances of suggestion, in the entertainment of which, the plain country liver—making lamentable failures—would lose courage and faith. The Pomologists may indeed say that there is no reason to make failure if their suggestions are followed to the letter, and the proper amount of care bestowed. This may be very true; but they do not enough consider that nine out of ten who love the country, and its delights of gar- den or orchard, can never be brought to that care and nicety of observation, which, with the devoted Horticulturist, is a second nature. 29 | po not know that the Horticulturists OUT-OF-TOWN PLACES Most men go to the country to make an easy thing of it. If they must commence study of all the later discoveries in vegetable physiology, and keep a sharp eye upon all new varieties of fruit—lest they fall behind the age; and trench their land every third year, and screen it—may be—in order to ensure the most perfect comminution of the soil, they find themselves entering upon the labors of a new profession, instead of lightening the fa- tigues of an old one. Any thorough practice of Horticulture does indeed involve all this; but there are plenty of outsiders, who, with- out any strong ambition in that direction, have yet a very determined wish to reap what pleasures they can out of a country life, by such moderate degree of attention and of labor as shall not overtax their time, or plunge ' them into the anxieties of a new and engross- ing pursuit. What shall be done for them? To talk to such people—and I dare say scores of them may be reading these pages now—about the comparative vigor of a vine grown from a single eye, or a vine grown from a layer, or about the shades of difference in flavor be- tween a Vicomtesse berry and a Triomphe de, Gand—is to talk Greek to them; it is as if a 30 ADVICE FOR LACKLAND druggist were to talk about the comparative influences of potash or of some simple styptic upon an irritated mucous membrane, to a man who wants simply—something to cure a sore throat. It is the aim of the Horticulturist to push both land and plants to the last limit of their capacity—to establish new varieties— to provoke nature by incessant pinchings into some abnormal development; whereas the aim of the mass of suburban residents is to have a cheery array of flowers—good fruit and plenty of it, at the smallest possible cost. If indeed the latter have any hope of winning what they wish, by simple transfer of their home from city to country, without any care or cost whatever, they are grossly mistaken. If a mere, bald love of fruit-eating, without any love for the ways of its production—calls a man to the country, I would strongly advise him to stay in town, and buy fruit at the city markets; and the man who goes into the country merely to stretch his legs, I would as strongly advise to do it on Broadway, or in bed. Nature is a mistress that must be wooed with a will; and there is no mistress worth the having, that must not be wooed in the same way. But the distinction remains which I have 31 OUT-OF-TOWN PLACES laid down between the aims of the Pomolo- gists and of the quiet country liver. And Iam strongly inclined to think that the former are a little too much disposed to sneer at the sim- ple tastes of the latter. There is a sturdy professional pride that enters into this, for something. I have before now been thrown into the company of breeders of blooded stock who would not so much as notice the best native animals—no matter how tenderly cared for, or how assiduously combed down; and yet a good dish of cream most people relish, even if the name of the cow is not writ- ten in the Herd-books. Of course that nice discrimination of tastes which enables a man to detect the minute shades of difference in flavors, is a thing of growth and long culture, and every man is inclined to respect what has cost him long culture. But if I smack my lips over the old Hovey, or a mahogany col- ored Wilson, and stick by them, I do not know that the zealous Pomologist has a right to condemn me utterly, because I do not root up my strawberry patches and plant Russell’s Prolific, or the Jucunda in their place. It is even doubtful if extreme cultivation of taste does not do away with a great deal of that hearty gusto with which most men enjoy 32 ADVICE FOR LACKLAND good fruit. The man who is all the summer through turning some little tid-bit of flavor upon the tip of his tongue, and going off into fits of rumination upon the possible difference of flavor between a Crimson-Cone when watered from an oak tub, and a Crimson-Cone when watered from a chestnut tub, seems to me in a fair way of losing all the appreciable and honest enjoyment of fruit which he ever had in his life. There lives about the London- Dock-Vaults a race of pimpled-faced men whose professional service it is to guzzle small draughts of Chateau Margaux or of rare Port, which they whip about with their tongues and expend their tasting faculties upon, with enormous gravity: but who in the world supposes that these can have the same appreciation of an honest bumper of wine, which a.quiet Christian gentleman has, who sits down to his dinner with a moderate glass of good, sound Bordeaux at his elbow? Outsiders may, I think, find a little comfort in this, and take courage in respect of their old Hovey patches—if they will keep them only clean and rich. But I have not said all this out of any want of regard for Horticulture as an art, demand- ing both skill and devotion; nor have I said it 33 OUT-OF-TOWN PLACES from any want of respect for those Pomolo- gists who are boldly leading the van in the prosecution of the Art; but I have wished sim- ply to clear away a little platform from which to talk about the wants of humble cultivators, and the way in which those wants are to be met. And here my old question recurs—what shall be done for them? To give my reply definite shape, I picture to myself my old friend Lackland, who has grown tired of thumping over the city pave- ments, who has two or three young children to whom he wishes to give a free tumble on the green sward, and who has an intense de- sire to pick his grapes off his own vine, in- stead of buying them on Broadway at forty cents the pound. He comes to me for advice. “My dear fellow,” I should say, “there ’s no giving any intelligible advice to a man whose notions are so crude. Do you want a country home for the year, or only a half home for six months in the year, from which you ’Il be flit- ting when the leaves are gone?” “To be sure,” says he, “it ’s worth consid- ering. And yet what difference could it make with your suggestions? Once established, I could determine better.” 34 ADVICE FOR LACKLAND “Tt makes this difference:—if you propose to establish a permanent home for the year, you want to provide against wintry blasts; you don’t want a hilltop where a northwester will be driving in your teeth all November; you want shelter; and you want near walks for your children through the snow-banks to school or church; and you don’t want the sea booming at the foot of your garden all winter long. If it ’s only a summer stopping place you have your eye upon, all these matters are of little account.” “Suppose we make it a permanent home,” says Lackland, “how much ground do I want to grow all the fruit and vegetables I may need for my family?” “That depends altogether upon your mode of culture. If you mean to trench and manure thoroughly, and have good soil to start with, and keep it up to the best possible condition, a half acre will more than supply you.” “Call it two acres,” says he, “and what shall I plant upon it?” What shall a man plant upon his two acres of ground, on which he wishes to establish a cosey home, where his children can romp to their hearts’ content, and he—take a serene pleasure in plucking his own fruit, pulling his 35 OUT-OF-TOWN PLACES own vegetables, smelling at his own rose-tree and smoking under his own vine? If he goes up with the question to some high court of Horticulture, he comes away with a list as long as my arm—in which are remontants that must be strawed over, vines that must be laid down, vegetables that must be coaxed by a fortnight of forcing, rare shrubs that must have their monthly pinching, monster berries that must have their semi-weekly swash of guano water, and companies of rare bulbs that, after wilting of the leaves, must be dug, and dried, and watched, and put out of reach. and found again, and replanted. And my friend Lackland reporting such a list to me, sees a broad grin gradually spread- ing over my face. “You think it a poor list, then?’ says he. “T beg your pardon; it ’s a most capital one; there are the newest things of every sort in it; and if you cultivate them as they ought to be cultivated, you “Il make a fine show; they Il elect you member of a Horticultural Society; heaven only knows but they ‘Il name you on a tasting committee.”’ “That would be jolly,” says he. “And you ’Il need plenty of bass-matting, and patent labels, and lead wire, and a box of 36 ADVICE FOR LACKLAND grafting instruments, and brass syringes of different capacities, and gauze netting for some of your more delicate fruits, and porce- lain saucers to float your big gooseberries in, and forcing beds, and guano tanks, and a small propagating house, and a padlock on your garden, and a Scotchman to keep the key at seventy dollars a month, and a fag to work the compost-heaps at forty-five more.” “The devil I will!’ he says. “Don’t be profane,’ I should say, “or if you needs must, you ‘ll have better occasion for it when you get fairly into the traces.” And then—more seriously—‘“‘My dear fel- low, the list, as I have said, is a capital one; but it supposes most careful culture, extreme attention, and a love for all the niceties of the art—which you have not. You want to take things easy; you don’t want to torment your- self with the idea that your children may be plucking unaware your specimen berries; you don’t want to lock them out of the garden. As sure as you undertake such a venture you ‘ll be at odds with your Scotchman; you ‘Il lose the names of your own trees; you ‘ll forget the hyacinths; your ‘half- hardys’ will all be scotched by the second winter; your dwarf ‘Vicars’ that need such 37 OUT-OF-TOWN PLACES careful nursing and high dressing will dwindle into lean shanks of pears that have no flavor. My advice to you is—to throw the fine list in the fire; to limit yourself, until you have felt your way, to some ten or a dozen of the best established varieties; don’t be afraid of old things if they are good; if a gaunt Rhode Island Greening tree is struggling in your hedge-row, trim it, scrape it, soap it, dig about it, pull away the turf from it, lime it, and then if you can keep up a fair fight against the bugs and the worms, you will have fine fruit from it; if you can’t, cut it down. If a vet- eran mossy pear tree is in your door-yard, groom it as you woulda horse—just in froma summering in briary pastures—put scions of Bartlett, of Winter Nelis, of Rostiezer into its top and sides. In an unctuous spot of your garden, plant your dwarf Duchess, Bonne de Jersey, Beurre Diel, and your Glout Morceau. If either don’t do well, pull it up and burn it; don’t waste labor on a sickly young tree. Save some sheltered spot for a trellis, where you may plant a Delaware, an Iona or two, a Rebecca, and a Diana. Put a Concord at your south-side door—its rampant growth will cover your trellised porch in a pair of seasons: it will give you some fine clusters, 38 ADVICE FOR LACKLAND even though you allow it to tangle: the Po- mologists will laugh at you; but let them: you will have your shade and the wilderness of frolicsome tendrils, and at least a fair show of purple bunches. Scatter here and there hardy herbaceous flowers that shall care for them- selves, and which the children may pluck with a will. Don’t distress yourself if your half acre of lawn shows some hummocks, or dan- delions, or butter-cups. And if a wild clump of bushes intrude in a corner, don’t condemn it too hastily; it may be well to enliven it with an evergreen or two—to dig about it, and paint its edges with a few summer phloxes or roses. You will want neither Scotchman nor forcing houses for this.” This is the way in which I should have talked to my friend Lackland, who would want to take things easy. I should not wonder if he were to buy his place of two acres, and make trial. God bless him if he does. LACKLAND MAKES A BEGINNING My friend Lackland—as I suspected he would —has purchased a little place of two and a 39 OUT-OF-TOWN PLACES half acres, some thirty or forty miles from the city by the New X railway. He makes his trips to and fro with a little badly-dis- guised fear of decayed “sleepers,” it is true; and suffers from the still more frequent em- barrassment of riding upon his feet—all the seats being occupied, and the company being unfortunately too much straitened in their cir- cumstances to add to the number of their carriages. He was disposed to resent such things at the start, and was even stirred into writing a brief and indignant appeal to an independent morning journal; but upon being ‘answered by an attorney for the company or a road commissioner, who called him names and abused him, as if he had been a witness before a court of justice, he subsided into that meek respect for corporations, and awe of all their procedure, which are the characteristics of a good American citizen, and of most well- ordered newspapers. New Yorkers learn how to bear such things ; there is no better schooling for submission than a two or three years’ course of travel upon the city railways; Lackland is submis- sive. And after a fatiguing day in Maiden Lane, having come up Fourth Avenue with a stout woman in his lap, he is grateful for 40 ADVICE FOR LACKLAND even a standpoint upon one of the New X—— cars. But this is all by the way. My friend Lackland has, as I said, bought a small country place within a mile of village and station, for which the purchase-money, in round numbers, was six thousand dollars. A certain proportion of this sum was paid in view of a projected horse railway, which is to pass the door, and to unfold building sites over his whole area of land. As yet, how- ever, it is in the rough. There is indeed “a brand-new house upon it—two stories, and only three years built,”’ as he writes me, “with ell wash-room, and all well painted with two coats of white lead. The property is dis- tributed into six different enclosures, of which I send you a draught.” And herewith I give the exhibit of Mr. Lackland’s little place, with its condition at time of purchase. “You will observe,” he continues, “that there is rather a cramped aspect about the door-yard and entrance, these being hemmed in by a white picket fence on either side and in front. It is unfortunately the only sound fence about the premises; the garden (c) showing a tottering remnant of one of the 4I OUT-OF-TOWN PLACES same pattern, and the other enclosures never having boasted anything finer than ‘post and rail’ fixtures, with a half-wall to prop them upon some of the exterior lines. The enclo- sure (d) is what the previous owner called his back yard; it was traversed, as you see, by a cart-path leading straight to the barn court, and was encumbered with a prodigious array of old wood, brush heaps, a broken cart or two, and one of the most luxurious thickets of burdock and stramonium which I ever re- member to have seen. He (former owner) tells me stramonium is good for ‘biles.’ Is it? “The buildings around the little enclosure marked (g) will explain themselves—a barn, a hog-pen, a cow-shed—all in most dilapi- 42 ADVICE FOR LACKLAND dated condition: so much so that I shall have to make a new investment in the way of stable room. There is the remnant of an old orchard upon the plot marked (k), with only three or four ragged and disorderly looking trees; at (j) again, there is a patch which has been in potatoes and corn for an indefinite number of years, and which has a terrible bit of ledge in the corner (marked m) over-run with briars and stunted cedars, that I fear will cost a round sum to reduce to a level. The fields (1) and (h) are pieces of mangy grass scattered over with occasional. bushes, but I do not despair of putting a smooth face upon them. The only view from the premises that is worth considering, is rather a pretty one (indicated by a dotted line) of the village spire, and a few of the village roofs peeping OUT-OF-TOWN PLACES out from the trees, and back of them a glimpse of the Sound. I send a rough sketch of it. “But the misfortune is, the view is only to be seen to advantage from my wash-room door, or from one spot in the garden just now encumbered with enormous Lawton briars. The first position is soapy and damp for visi- tors, and the last—tedious. “What I wish of you,”—my friend Lack- land continues to write,—“‘is to give me a hint or two about the combing of this rough little home of mine into shape. And in order to a more definite understanding I will tell you briefly what I don’t want, and next what I do want. “And first, being a plain man, I don’t want crooked walks, for the mere sake of having them crooked ; I don’t want to go into my gate in a hurry—when I know dinner is already smoking on the table—and yet, after entrance, be compelled to describe a circle planted with I know not what barbarian evergreens, before I can get to my door. “T don’t want my stable yard absolutely in sight; least of all do I wish to be compelled ‘to traverse it, before I can get sight of my pet mare. 44 ADVICE FOR LACKLAND “T don’t wish a carriage drive to my door- step, when my door is only fifty feet from the road by a tape-line. “T don’t want to pull down or to move the present house, because in so doing I should sacrifice a capital cellar, which I must do the previous owner the justice to say, has been capitally arranged. “T don’t want such a great array of fences; I don’t want a labyrinth of walks; I don’t want my garden so near the street as that chance passers-by shall see me in my shirt sleeves and hail me with: ‘Hello! Squire, what you goin’ to ask a peck for them pa’- snips ?” “I do want a little of good elbow-room about the house and entrance, as if I were not in momentary fear of an incursion of pigs from the back yard; I do want a garden of somewhat larger area, where I can grub away at my will; and if you draw me a plan, put at least a fourth of the whole land into herbs and garden stuff. I want the view kept of the village spire, and the background of sea, and some lounging place from which I may look upon it at my leisure. I want a poultry-yard of such dimensions that I may count upon a fresh egg every day to my breakfast; I 45 OUT-OF-TOWN PLACES want provision for a salad on Easter Sunday; and if you could contrive me some cheap fash- ion of a cold grapery to try my hand upon, I should be thankful; only let it be so situated that I may (if grapes fail) turn it into a win- ter room for my hens. I want you to tell me what I can do with the rock I must blast away from the edge in the corner of the potato- patch. I want something I may call a lawn —to satisfy my wife’s pride—and a bit or two of shrubbery in it. But above all, I want at least a third of the land in good wholesome greensward, with no encumbering trees— whether fruit or exotic—where I may turn my mare for a run, or play at base-ball with my boys, or cut a bit of hay, or—if the hu- mor takes me—try my hand at a premium crop of something.”’ Upon this I made a little study of Lack- land’s plot of land, and furnished him with this design. And I furthermore said to him, your ledge (which I have marked g) is one of the most picturesque features about your place; so I have thrown it boldly into your garden, in such way that it will be in full view from the gate, and I advise you to cherish it—to plant columbines on its ledges, and your Tom 46 ADVICE FOR LACKLAND Thumb geraniums along its lower edge, in such sort that in autumn they will seem like a running flame of fire skirting the cliff and blending with the crimson verbenas upon the circle in the centre of the garden. At (f) you have a map of the garden and your work place, and to make the privacy of it entire, you may plant a hedge for a barrier along the line (4) or you may set a trellis there and cover it with vines. At (e) you have a hot- bed to provide your Easter salad, and you may multiply the hot-beds if you like along the horder (7) which is made under shelter of a high fence to the north. At (c) you 47 OUT-OF-TOWN PLACES have your cheap grapery built against the south-side of the barn, and convenient for the transmutation you suggest; at (b) is your stable, and at (d) your poultry house with a sunny stable court to the south of it. At (m) you have your paddock for the mare, or your mall for base-ball, or your plow-ground for a premium crop—utterly free from shrub- bery, and communicating with barn and with street alike. The lawn explains and describes itself; but I would only suggest that the shrubbery marked (7) will be a capital spot, under shade from south, for your Rhododen- drons,’ and the circle (/) I would advise you to fill with a dense coppice of hemlock spruce to break the wind from the north. Along the border marked (k) you can either plant apple trees, and at fifteen feet of distance, a thicker line of dwarf pears (being careful to trench or *Various horticulturists have discussed the method of isolating a border of rhododendrons from the in- fluences of a forest screen to the south—one suggesting simple amputation of the roots of the trees forming the screen, and the other the interposition of a wall. The last is expensive and the former liable to be neglected. An open ditch, some two feet deep by eighteen inches wide, I have seen most effectively employed for the end proposed, by a very successful southern horticulturist, who succeeded, year after year, in securing a magnif- icent bloom of some ten or twelve varieties of Azaleas, within twenty feet of gigantic cypresses and magnolias. The ditch may also serve as a convenient receptacle for leaves and the rakings of the borders, 48 ADVICE FOR LACKLAND subsoil the ground), or you can stock it with a protecting belt of evergreens. In either case, give thorough cultivation, if you wish the best results. At (a) is the “brand-new” house remod- elled in such fashion that yout have a southern porch, a kitchen in the rear, and a bay-window in your dining-room, which commands (by the dotted line) the same view which now wastes its charm upon the stout woman at your wash-tub. It is possible that my friend Lackland may report progress to me some time in the course of the summer. LACKLAND’S HOUSE PLANS UNFORTUNATELY, almost every city gentle- man who comes into possession—whether by purchase or otherwise—of a plain country house, from which some honest. well-to-do farmer has just decamped, puzzles his brain first of all, to know how he shall make a “fine thing” of it. My advice to such puzzled gen- tlemen, in nine cases out of ten, would be— “not to do it.” 49 OUT-OF-TOWN PLACES If the ceilings are low, and the beams show here and there the generous breadth and depth of timber which old-time builders put into their frames, cherish these remembrances of a sturdier stock than ours; scrub and paint and paper as you will, but if the skeleton be stanch, and no dry rot shake the joints or give a sway to the floors and ceiling—try, for a few years at least, the moral effect of an old house. It can do no harm to a dapper man from the city. It may teach his wife possibly some of the humilities which she cannot learn on Broad- way. With a free, bracing air whistling around the house corners, and here and there an open fire within, low rooms are by no means poisonous; and if the trees do not so far shade the roof as to keep away the fierce outpourings of a summer’s sun, and the low chambers carry a stifling air in August, it is only necessary, in many instances, to tear away the garret flooring, and to run up the chamber ceilings into tent-like canopies, with a ventilator in their peak—to have as free cir- culation as in the town attics. And such tented ceilings may be prettily hung with French striped papers, with a fringe-like bor- der at the line of junction of the vertical with the sloping wall—in such sort that your mili- 50 ADVICE FOR LACKLAND tary friend, if he comes to pass a July night with you, may wake with the illusion of the camp upon him, and listen to such réveille as the crowing of a cock, or the piping of a wren. But a monstrous and intolerable grievance to all people of taste lies in the attempt to set off one of those grave exteriors, at which I have hinted, by some of the more current architectural cockneyisms. Thus, an ancient door, with the dark green paint in blisters upon it, and opening in the middle, perhaps, is torn away to give place to the newest fancy from the sash factories, and a glazing of red and blue. For my part, I have great respect for a door that has banged back and forth its welcomes and its good-byes for half a cen- tury; the very blisters on it seem to me only the exuding humors of a jovial hospitality; and all the weather-stains are but honorable scars of a host of battles against wind and rain. I would no more barter such an old- time door against the newness of the joiners, than I would barter old-time honesty against that of Oil Creek, or of Wall Street. Then again, your cockney must tear away the homely sheltering porch, with its plank “settles” on either side, for some stupendous 51 OUT-OF-TOWN PLACES affair, with columns for which all heathenism has been sacked to supply the capitals. If renovation must be made, it should be made in keeping with the original stylé of the house—except indeed change go so far as to divest it altogether of the old aspect. In some farm-houses that may be taken in hand for repairs, it might be well even to strain a point in the direction of antiquity, and to replace a swageging door by a stanch one of double- battened oak or chestnut, with its wrought nails showing their heads in checkered dia- mond lines up and down, and its hinges, worked into some fanciful pattern of a drag- on’s tail, exposed. Then there should be a ponderous iron knocker, whose din should reach all over the house, and the iron thumb- latch—not cast and japanned, but showing stroke of the hammer and taking on rust where the maid cannot reach with her brick- dust. Of coursé, too, there should be the two diamond lights liké two great eyes peering from under the frontlet of the old-fashioned stoop. All these, if the house be so ancient and weather-stained as to admit of it, will demonstrate that the occupant is among the few who are left in these days of petroleum, who make a merit of homeliness, and cherish 52 ADVICE FOR LACKLAND tenderly its simplest features. If the house be really weak in the joints, the sooner it comes down the better; but if it has snugness and stiffness and comfort, let not the owner be persuaded of the carpenters to graft upon it the modernisms of their tricksy joinery. I can well understand how a dashing buck of two or three and thirty should prefer a young woman in her furbelows, to an old one in her bombazine; but if the fates put him in leash with an ancient lady, let him think twice be- fore he bedizens her gray head with prepos- terous frontlets, and puts a mesh of girl’s curls upon the nape of her old neck. I have said all this as a prelude to a little talk about certain changes which my friend Lackland has wrought in his country place —thirty miles by the New X—— road. The house he purchased could boast no re- spectability of age. The height of its rooms was of that medium degree which neither suggested any notion of quaintness nor of airiness. Its entrance-hall was pinched and narrow; its stairway inhospitably lean, and altogether its appointments had that cribbed and confined aspect, which, to one used to width and sunshine, was almost revolting. The wash-room was positively the only apart- SS OUT-OF-TOWN PLACES ment below stairs which had a southern as- pect. I give his drawing of it, and it is a good type of a great many “small and convenient houses” scattered through our country towns. “Of course, this will never do,” wrote Lackland to me, “and yet the skin of the house (as our carpenter calls it) is very good, and I wish to make the needed changes, so far as possible, without disturbing the exterior outline of the main building. But how shall I rid myself of that preposterously narrow entrance-way in which I can almost fancy Mrs. L., (who is something large) getting wedged on some warm day? How shall I throw sunlight into that dismal parlor? You will perceive that along the whole south front there is not a single available window below. Now, half the charm of a country place, to my notion, lies in the possession of some 54 ADVICE FOR LACKLAND sunny porch upon which the early vines will clamber, and under whose eaves the Phoebe birds will make their nests. I want, too, my after-dinner lounges at a sunny door, where » I can smoke my pipe, basking in the yellow light, as I watch the shadows chasing over the grass. About the stupid little design I send you, there is neither hope nor possibility of this. “Again, even witha dining-room, or library added, and perhaps a kitchen, I shall be still in want of further chamber range, which if I gain (as our carpenter suggests) by piling on a story more, it appears to me that I should give to the narrow front of the house an ab- surd cock-loft look that would be unendur- able. “Mrs. L. and myself have scored out an incredible number of diagrams—all which have been discussed, slept on, admired, and eventually condemned. Sometimes it is the old pinched entrance way that works condem- nation; sometimes (on my part) the lack of sunny exposure; and oftenest (on hers) the lack of closets. She insists that no man yet ever planned a house properly on this score. She does n’t see clearly (being deficient in mathematics) why a closet should n’t be made 55 OUT-OF-TOWN PLACES in every partition wall. She don’t definitely understand, I think, why a person should thwack his head in a closet under the stairs. She sometimes (our carpenter tells us) insists upon putting a window through a chimney; and on one occasion (it was really a very pretty plan) contrived so as to conduct a chimney through the middle of the best bed room; and the nicest scheme of all, to my thinking, positively had the stairs left out entirely. In this dilemma, I want you to tell us what can be done with the old shell, so as to make it passably habitable, until we find out if this new passion for country life is to hold good.” 56 ADVICE FOR LACKLAND Upon this I ventured to send him this little plan of adaptation, which, though not without a good many faults that could be obviated in building anew, yet promised to meet very many of their wants, and gave to Lackland his sunny frontage. “Here you have,” I wrote him, “your south door, and porch to lounge upon, and your south bow window to your library, which, if the rural tastes grow upon you, you can ex- tend into a conservatory, covering the whole southern flank of the apartment. The parlor, too, has its two south windows, and although I should have preferred to place the chimney upon the northern side, to the exclusion of the window there, yet it seemed best to make use 57 OUT-OF-TOWN PLACES of the flue already established. The hall is well lighted from the north, and will give room for the hanging of any of your great- aunt’s portraits, if you have any. “There is an objection to traversing the dining-room in going from the kitchen to the hall-door; but it could not well be obviated, with the existing shell of your house, without reducing the size of the dining-room too much, or (another resource) without increas- ing largely the dimensions of the hall—throw- ing the intervening space between it and kitchen into store-rooms and making the library do duty for the spread of your table. “The dining-room, moreover, having only north exposure, you may condemn as dismal. I propose to obviate this and to give it a cheerful south light by an extravagance which I dare say the architects will condemn, but which will have its novelty and possible convenience. “The fireplaces of library and of dining- room, are, you observe, back to back. Now I would suggest that the two flues be carried up with a sweep to either side (uniting in the garret) in such sort, that a broad arched opening shall be left above the mantel from one room into the other. This may be draped, 58 ADVICE FOR LACKLAND if you like, with some tasteful upholstery; but not so far as to forbid a broad flow of the warm light from the bow window of the li- brary; while upon the mantels of even height, you may place a Wardian case that shall show its delicate plumes of fern between your table and the southern sunlight all winter long. It would moreover be quite possible, owing to the breadth of partition wall afforded by the two flues, to arrange folding shutters for the complete closing of the arch-way whenever desired. For my own part, I love such little novelties of arrangement, which mark a man’s house as his own, however much they may put the carpenters to the gape. “As for the additional chamber-room, never think of putting a third story upon so narrow- throated a house, or you will give it an irre- deemable gawkiness. If the space is needed, find it by throwing a more generous roof over all (raising the plates if need be), and light- ing your cock-lofts with dormer windows. Then paint with discretion; avoid white, and all shades of lilac—the most abominable color that was ever put upon a house—you can’t match the flowers, and don’t try, I beg. A mellow brown or a cool gray are the best for the principal surfaces. Let there be no forced 59 OUT-OF-TOWN PLACES contrasts and no indecisive mingling of tones; above all, remember that with your elevations, you want to aim to reduce the . bY ee wd Wee t *. = apparent height; work in, therefore, as many horizontal lines of decisive color as your ex- terior carpentry will allow; give dark hoods, if you will, to your front parlor windows, and let the cornice-finish below your mansard roof reach well down, and carry dark shading. “When you are fairly in, I will come and see how you look.” ADVICE FOR LACKLAND LACKLAND’S GARDENER Wir his grounds laid out and his house in fairly habitable condition—according to the plans already laid before the reader—Lack- land holds various consultations in regard to a proper gardener—consults as in duty bound, first of all, Mrs. Lackland. Mrs. Lackland wishes an industrious, sober man, who will keep the walks neat and tidy, who knows enough of flowers not to hoe up any of her choice annuals,—(whose seeds she dots about in all directions, marking the places with fragments of twigs thrust in at all possible angles) ; she wishes moreover, a good-natured man, who shall be willing to come and pot a flower for her at a moment’s notice; one who will not forget the sweet marjoram or the sage, and who will not allow the thyme to die in the winter. He consults the city seedsmen, who refer him to a half-dozen of stout men who may be lounging upon the barrels in the front of their sales-rooms on almost any fine morning in April; but, on entering into parley with them, 61 OUT-OF-TOWN PLACES he is so confounded with their talk about ranges, and pits, and bottom heat, and Pelar- goniums, and Orchids, that he withdraws in disgust. He consults the newspapers, where he finds a considerable array of advertisements of “steady, capable men, willing to make them- selves useful upon a gentleman’s place;”’ he communicates with some two or three of the most promising advertisers, and arranges for an interview with them. Lackland has great faith, like almost all the men I ever met, in his study of physiognomy. About a man’s temper or his honesty, he can hardly be mis- taken, he thinks, if he can once set eyes upon him. He is therefore strongly disposed in favor of a stout, jolly-faced Irishman, who assures him he can grow as good “vigitables as enny man in Ameriky.” “And flowers, Patrick (Patrick O’Donohue is his name), you could take care of the flowers ?” “Oh, flowers, and begorra, yis, sir—roses, pinks, vi’lets—roses—whativer you wish, sir.” “And, Patrick, you could harness a horse sometimes if it were necessary.” “Horses. and indade, yis, sir; ye may jist say I ’m at home in a stable, sir.” 62 ADVICE FOR LACKLAND “And the poultry, Patrick, you could look after the poultry, could n’t you?” “And indade, sir, that’s what I can; there’s niver a man in the counthry can make hens lay as I can make ’em lay.” In short, Lackland bargains with Patrick, and reports him at the home-quarters “a per- fect jewel of a man.” The best of implements are provided, and a great stock of garden seeds—the choice of the latter being determined on after family consultation, in which all the vegetablés ever heard of by either party to the counsel, have been added to the list. If a man have a gar- den, why not enjoy all that a garden can pro- duce—egeg-plants, and okra, and globe arti- chokes, and salsify, and white Naples radishes, and Brussels sprouts? The seed of all these are handed over to the willing Patrick, who, as Mrs. Lackland impressively enumerates the different labels (Patrick not being competent to the reading of fine print, as he freely con- fesses), repeats after her, “Naples radish, yis, m’am; artichokes, yis, m’am; okra, yis, m’am.” Lackland provides frames and glass for the early salads he covets so much, and Patrick, with the fresh sweepings of the stables, has presently a bed all a-steam. At the mere sight 63 OUT-OF-TOWN PLACES of it the Lacklands regale themselves with thoughts of crisp radishes, and the mammoth purple fruit of the egg-plants. The seeds are all put in—early cabbage, cauliflower, peppers, radishes—under the same frame by the judi- cious O’Donohue. The cabbages and the rad- ishes come forward with a jump. Their ex- pedition forms a pleasant theme for the physi- ological meditation of Lackland. He is de- lighted with the stable manure, with the cab- bage seed, and with the O’Donohue. He is inclined to think disrespectfully of the seed of peppers and of egg-plants in the comparison. But the bland O’ Donohue says, ‘‘We must give ’em a little more hate.” And after some three or four days, Lack- land is stupefied, on one of his visits to his hot bed, to find all his fine radishes and cabbages fairly wilted away; there is nothing left of them but a few sun-blackened stumps; the peppers and egg-plants show no signs of ger- mination. “What does all this mean?” says Lackland; “the cabbages are dead, Patrick.” “Vis, sir—it ’s the hate, sir. The sun is very strong here, sir; we must give ’em a little more air, sir.” And they get the air—get the air (by a little 64 ADVICE FOR LACKLAND forgetfulness on the part of Patrick) night as well as day; the peppers and egg-plants, after a fortnight more of expectation, do not appear. | “How ’s this, Patrick? no start yet.” “‘And are ye sure the seed ’s good, sir?” “Tt ’s all Thorburn’s seed.” “Then, of course, it ought to be good, sir; but, ye see, there ’s a dale o’ chatery now-a- days, sir.” In short, Lackland’s man Patrick is a good- natured blunder-head, who knows no better than to submit his young cauliflowers and pep- pers to the same atmospheric conditions in the forcing frame. The result is that Lackland buys his first salads in the market, and his first pears in the market, and _ his first beets in the market. All these creep along very slowly under Patrick’s supervision, and the onion seed is fairly past hope, being buried too deep for the sun to have any influence upon its germinating properties. “But how is this,” says the long-suffering Lackland, at last, “our neighbors are all before us, Patrick?” “Well, sir, it ’s me opinion that the land is a bit cowld, sir. Wait till July, sir, and you ’Il see vigitables.” 65 OUT-OF-TOWN PLACES And Patrick grubs away with a great deal of misdirected energy—slicing off, in the heat of his endeavor two or three of Mrs. Lack- land’s choicest rocket tarkspurs; whereupon that lady comes down upon him with some zeal. “Larkspur! and that ’s a larkspur, is it, m’am (scratching his head reflectingly) ? and, begorra, I niver once thought ’t was a lark- spur. Pity, pity; and so it was, indade, a lark- spur? Well, well, but it ’s lucky it wa’n’t a rose-bush, m’am.” And yet the good-natured blunder-head in the shape of a gardener is far more endurable, to one thoroughly interested in country life, than the surly fellow who, if he gives you early vegetables, resents a suggestion, and who will take a pride in making any particular scheme of the proprietor miscarry by a studied neglect of its details. Upon the whole, I should lay down as sound advice for any one who, like Lackland, is beginning to establish for himself a home in the country that shall be completely enjoyable, the following rules with respect to the pursuit and employment of a gardener: First, if your notion of country enjoyment is limited by thought of a good place where 66 pia aie « Sep ADVICE FOR LACKLAND you may lie down under the trees, and frolic with your children, or smoke a pipe under your vine, or clambering rose-tree at evening—find a gardener who is thoroughly taught, and who can place upon your table every day the freshest and crispest of the vegetables and fruits of the season, leaving you no care, but the care of bills for superphosphates and trenching. If you stroll into his domain of the garden, take your walking-stick or your pipe there, if you choose—but never a hoe or a pruning knife. Joke with him, if you like, but never advise him. Take measure of his fitness by the fruits he puts upon your table, the order of your grounds, and the total of your bills. If these are satisfactory—keep him: if not, discharge him, as you would a lawyer who managed your case badly, or a doctor who bled or purged you to a sad state of depletion. If, on the other hand, in establishing a country home, you have a wish to identify yourself with its growth into fertility and comeliness, in such sort that you may feel that every growing shrub is a little companion for you and yours—every vine a friend—every patch of herbs, of vegetables, or of flowers, an aid to the common weal and pleasures of 67 OUT-OF-TOWN PLACES home, in which you take, and will never cease to take, a personal interest and pride—if all this be true, and you have as good as three hours a day to devote to personal superintend- ence—then, by all means, forswear all gar- deners who come to you with great recom- mendations of their proficiency. However just these may be, all their accomplishments, ten to one, will be only a grievance to you. It is far better if you be really in earnest to taste ruralities to the full, to find some honest, industrious fellow—not unwilling to be taught —who will lend a cheerful hand to your ef- forts to work out the problem of life in the country for yourself. You will blunder; but in such event you will enjoy the blunders. You will burn your young cabbages, but you will know better an- other year. Your first grafts will fail, but you will find out why they fail. You will put too much guano to your sweet corn, but you will have a pungent agricultural fact made clear to you. You will leave your turnips and beets standing too thickly in the rows; but you will learn by the best of teaching—never to do so again. You will buy all manner of fertilizing nostrums—and of this it may require a year or two to cure you. You will believe in every 68 ee eee ee ee ee ADVICE FOR LACKLAND new grape, or strawberry,—and of this it may require many years to cure you. You will put faith, at the first, in all the horticultural ad- vices you find in the newspapers,—and of this you will speedily be cured. In short, whoever is serious about this mat- ter, of taking a home in the country (if his rural taste be a native sentiment, and not a whim), should abjure the presence of a surly _ master in the shape of a garder er, who can tell him how the Duke of Buccleugh (or any other) managed such matters. God manages all of nature’s growth and bloom in such way, that every earnest man with an observant eye can so far trace the laws of His Providence, as to insure to himself a harvest of fruit, or grain, or flowers. And whatever errors may be made are only so many instructors, to teach, and to quicken love by their lesson. Let us not then despair of our friend Lack- land, though his cabbages are burnt, and his beets are behind the time. I shall visit him again, and trust that I may find his verbenas and lilies in bloom, though his larkspurs have been cut down. OUT-OF-TOWN PLACES A PIG AND A COW I PROPOSE an odd horticultural subject; but the man who plants a garden, and builds a cottage, and carries in his thought the hope of shaking off the dust of the city under green trees upon his own sward-land, where some—nameless party—in white lawn, with blue ribbon of a sash (as in Mr. Irving’s pretty picture of a wife), stands ready to greet him, after an hour of torture at the hands of our humane railroad directors—the man, I say, who looks forward to all this, and enters upon the experience, thinks, sooner or later, of a cow and a pig— the pig to consume the waste growth of his garden, and the cow to supply such tender food for his growing ones as they most need. The pig can hardly be regarded as a classic animal; Virgil, indeed, introduces him as crunching acorns under elm-trees—which ac- count I cannot help reckoning as apocryphal. But he is a very jolly and frisky little animal in his young days, not without a good deal of clumsy grace in his movements, and showing a most human zeal for the full end of the trough. 70 ADVICE FOR LACKLAND There is almost the same diversity of opinion with respect to the different races of pigs, which our horticultural friends indulge in with respect to fruits. It is always an awkward mat- ter to discuss the merits of different families, whether of animals who talk, or animals who only grunt or bellow. If the raw suburban resident, in whose interest I make these notes, has an ambition to rear a prize hog that shall - out-weigh anything his neighbors can show, and intends to keep his bin full of rank mate- rial, I should certainly advise the great-boned Chester County race, which, with judicious feeding, come to most elephantine proportions. If, on the other hand, he should prefer a dap- per, snug-jointed beast, that shall not be par- ticular in regard to food, and which will yield him cutlets in which the muscular material shall not be utterly overlaid and lost in fatty adipose matter, I should counsel the sleek Berkshire. Or if, uniting the two, he should de- sire a delicate limbed, well-rounded, contented little animal, that shall browse with equanimity upon the purslane and the spare beet-tops from his garden, I know none safer to commend than the Suffolks. Nor is it essential that he be thorough bred, since the tokens of pur sang are a red baldness, and a possible twisting 71 OUT-OF-TOWN PLACES away of the beast’s own tail, which do not con- tribute to good looks.’ All this is but preparatory to my reply to Lackland, who writes to me: “ We have voted to have a pig and a cow; what kind shall I get, and how shall I keep them, and what shall I do with them?” And I wrote back to him: “Buy what the dealers will sell you for a Suffolk; if he lack somewhat in purity of blood (as he probably will), don’t be punctilious in the matter. Let his sleeping and eating quarters be high and dry; and if you can manage beyond this a little forage ground for him to disport himself in, and wallow (if he will) on wet days—so much the better. The forage, if you keep him supplied with raw material in the shape of muck, or old turfs from your hedge-rows, will add largely to your compost heap, and in this way he will make up any possible sacrifice in his flesh. Miss Martineau, I know, in her ‘Two Acre Farming,’ advises severe cleanli- ness; and if the only aim were a roaster for your table and accumulation of fat, there *I must drop, in a note, commendatory mention of the Earl of Sefton Stock, of which a few animals have latterly found their way to this country—a trim, sound, long-bodied breed, easy keepers, and giving, with proper care, delicious rashers of bacon. 72 Demers | * Ps ADVICE FOR LACKLAND might be virtue in the recommendation. But a pig’s work among your turfs is worth half of his pork. He will thrive very likely upon the waste from your table and your garden. But, against any possible shortness of food supply, it were well to provide a bag of what the grain people will sell you as ‘ship stuff;’ and this, stirred into the kitchen wash, will make an unctuous holiday gruel for your little beast, for which he will be clamorously grateful. “Again; the sty should be convenient to the garden (a hemlock spruce or two will shut off the sight of it, and a sweet honey-suckle subdue the odors of it); then you may throw over chance bits of purslane, or the suckers from your sweet corn, or a gone-by salad, and find thanks in the noisy smacking of his chops. I would not give a fig for a country house where no such homely addenda are allowed, and where a starched air of propriety must always reign, to the complete exclusion of every stray weed, and to the exclusion of the rollicking Suffolk grunter in its corner, who squeals his entreaty, and declares thanks with the click-clack of his active jaws. “He will take on larger and clumsier pro- portions month by month, and will be none the 73 OUT-OF-TOWN PLACES worse for the occasional carding which your zealous Irishman can afford him in spare hours; and when, in the month of October or November, the waste growth of the garden is abating, and the frost has nipped the bean- tops, and laid your tomatoes in a black sprawl upon the ground, your Suffolk (with, say, one or two additional bags of mixed feed) should be ripe for the knife. “My advice, at this conjuncture, would be —sell him to the butcher. Those who like pig flesh better would give you rules for cut and curing. But, while I have considerable respect for the pork family when fairly afoot and showing grateful appreciation of the delights of life and of a full trough, I have very little consideration for the same animals when baked or stewed. Charles Lamb’s pleasant eulogium on roast pig is one of the most ter- rible instigators of indigestion that I know; and I want no better theory for that charming writer’s occasional periods of bitter despond- ency, than to suppose him to have dined ‘at seven, sharp,’ upon the dish he has so pleas- antly and fearfully extolled. “T do not mean to say that exception is not to be made in favor of a good rasher of bacon at breakfast, with a fresh egg (from the cock 74 ADVICE FOR LACKLAND —as a city friend once suggested:in a flow of cheery, rural exuberance) ; nor do | think any- thing can be righteously said against a snug bit of clear pork in a dish of boiled corned brisket of beef; nay, I would still further extend the exception to a crisp fry of delicate slices as an accompaniment of grilled trout, where the latter fall below a half-pound in weight; nor do I think great harm of a thin blanket of the same condiment to enwrap a roasted quail, or slivers of it to enlard deli- cately a fricandeau of veal. But, as for pork chops, or pork toast, or pork boiled, to be eaten as_ the chief piece nutritive of a dinner— it is an abomination! Our friends the Jews have not only Scriptural reason in the thing, but reasons physiological. “And now, my dear fellow, having de- spatched your pig (who should be bought for five or six dollars at seven weeks old, and should be sold at twenty—from the growth of your garden and a splicing bag of ship stuff), you will have, if you have used proper vig- ilance, some three to four loads of choice com- post to contribute to the vegetable growth of the next season. There is a notion that ma- nure from such a source provokes the growth of club-foot in cabbages and cauliflowers; but 75 OUT-OF-TOWN PLACES after repeated trials with a view to fix this averment, I am unable to do so. Club-foot is not lacking with awkward frequency, but appears quite as often, so far as my experience goes, with other fertilizers as with that from the pig sty. A good liming and fresh-turned soil are, so far as I can determine, the best preventives. Another precaution, which, in my view, should never be neglected, is to.re- move and destroy at once all plants which show symptoms of this ailment. “The cow is a more tractable subject. Of course, you wish one that never kicks, that any one can milk, that will not resent indig- nities, and will yield you all the milk and the butter you need, and possibly the cheese. “T remember that a city gentleman of great horticultural (and other) ability called upon » me not many years ago, and after descanting upon the absurdity of planting two acres for a crop which could be easily grown from half an acre, he asked me how many quarts of milk my cows averaged per diem? ‘Four- teen to fifteen quarts,’ said I, ‘in the flush season.’ “But that is very small,’ said he; ‘there is no more reason why you should not have cows giving twenty to twenty-four quarts a day, 76 ADVICE FOR LACKLAND than why you should not have strawberries giving two quarts to the plant.’ “T was not prepared to gainsay the proposi- tion. The truth is, I feel a certain awe of distinguished horticulturists that blinds me even to their wildest assertions. What has an humble cultivator to do, or to say, in the presence of a man who has bagged his pre- miums at a New York Horticultural Society, and is taster ex-officio at the Farmers’ Club? “T did not argue the matter with him; I submitted; I acknowledged my mediocrity humbly. “Now, my dear fellow, there are cows which yield their twenty to twenty-five quarts a day, but they are very exceptional. Many such,- whose private history I have known, have been fed upon their own milk with the cream taken off. This involves, as you will _ admit, I think, a quick reconversion of capital, which, with children in the Bony, is not al- ways practicable. “In a general way, I should say, it would be far safer to count upon an average of twelve to fifteen quarts per day, even with the best of care. And as regards your actual pur- chase of an animal, I dare say you will have Wall Street friends, who will talk grandly of 77 OUT-OF-TOWN PLACES the short horns, and suggest some Daisy, (1397, A. H. B.,) at a cost of six or seven hundred dollars, and—viewing her pedigree —cheap at that. My advice to you is, don’t buy any such, unless you intend to turn breeder, and enter the lists with the herd book people. I say this, not because the short-horns are not admirable animals; but admirable ani- mals are not always the best domestic animals, —as some of your recently married friends may possibly be able to testify. “But a man who, like yourself, comes to the country for a leisurely enjoyment of all country bounties, does not wish an animal that must invariably be kept under the best possi- ble condition; he wishes a docile, adaptable creature. Even a snug native beast might meet all the ends you would have in view, without figuring largely upon the cash book. “Or, still better, a sleek Ayrshire, that shall carry in her air and horn a little show of bet- ter breeding and full returns to the milk pail. But if you have a fancy for cream that is fairly golden, and for occasional conversion of excess of milk into a little paté of golden butter, nothing will suit your purpose better than a dainty Alderney, with her fawn-like eyes and yellow skin. 78 we ADVICE FOR LACKLAND “T am aware that the short-horn people— who can see nothing good in a cow, except her figure show mathematical straightness of line from tail to the setting of her horn—sneer at the comparatively diminutive Alderneys. It is true, moreover, that there may be in them a hollow of the back, and an undue droop to the head, and possibly an angular projection of the hip-bones; but their nose is of the fine- ness of a fawn’s, their eyes bright and quick as a doe’s; their skin soft and silken, and with a golden hue (if of good family), which gives best of promise for the cream-pot. Above all they have a tractability which, in a domestic pet, is a most admirable quality. ‘Spot,’ (the black and white Alderney,) the children can fondle; she can be tethered to a stake upon the lawn, and will feed as quietly as if she were in a field of lucerne: she is grateful for a bonne bouche from the garden, and takes it from the hand as kindly as a dog. This docil- ity is a thing of great consequence upon a lit- tle country place where every animal is made more or less of a pet. It is not every cow that will bear tethering upon a lawn; there are those indeed who can never be taught to sub- mit to the confinement. The sleek Alderneys inherit a capacity for this thing, and I have 79 OUT-OF-TOWN PLACES seen upon the green orchards near to St. Hiliers, (Isle of Jersey,) scores of them, each cropping its little circlets of turf as closely and cleanly as if it had been shorn. In way | of convenience for this service, it is well to have an old harrow tooth with a ring adjusted to its top, and revolving freely, upon which ring an iron swivel should be attached. To such a fixture, easily moved, and made fast in the ground by a blow or two of a wooden mallet, a halter may be tied without fear of any untwisting of the rope, or of any winding up or other entrapment of the poor beast. I give these hints because it is often convenient to furnish a pet cow, from time to time, some detached feeding ground, where the shrubbery will not admit of free rambling; and there are none whose habit is better adapted to such indulgence upon the lawn than the Alderneys. “If your cow be kept up constantly for stall-feeding, an earthen floor is desirable, and by all means a half hour’s run in the barn- yard of a morning. A darkened shed will be a great luxury to her in fly time, and will largely promote the quiet under which she works out the most bountiful returns from the succulent food of the garden. A bit of ground in lucerne—say four rods square (it 80 nan eas ADVICE FOR LACKLAND should be in drills and kept hoed the first sea- son) —will yield an enormous amount of food material, and if convenient to the stall, your children will delight in binding it up in little sheaves for “Moolly.” If such a bit of ground be so situated as to admit of an occa- sional sprinkling with liquid manure, five good cuts in a season may be safely counted on; nor do I know any summer herbage which cows love better. Remember furthermore, that the lucerne, as well as corn fodder, is improved by a half day’s wilting before being fed. In winter, the carrots and mangel wurtzel will become available; both of which any cow may be taught to love, (if teaching be necessary,) by giving them a good sprink- ling of meal. In the change from summer to winter diet, and from winter to summer, it must be remembered that all sudden changes from great succulence to dry food, or vice versa, is to be most cautiously avoided. Lack of care on this score, is the secret of half the cow ailments. 5 f ‘ ; . 3 j r % ‘ Li ‘ m d 5 a % a i . 3 : : ; n + i] : ‘ “Tf I were to lay down a pleasant and pro- d ductive winter dietary for your Alderney, it q would be a peck of sliced roots in the morn- 3 ing, not forgetting a lock of sweet hay; at : noon, a quart or two of brewer’s grains and : 81 4 h i \ a a, OUT-OF-TOWN PLACES fresh water ad libitum; at night, a warm pail- ful of drink, into which a quart of coarsely ground buckwheat meal shall have been stirred, and another lock of sweet hay in way of nightcap. ‘With such food, and an occasional comb- ing, at the hands of Patrick, (all the better if daily,) I think you may count upon such golden returns of cream as will bring back a taste of the grassy spring-time.”’ Thus much for Lackland’s Pig and Cow. ON GATEWAYS I HAVE often wondered why the professional writers on landscape gardening have so little to say of gateways. Among the more pre- tentious authors of this class I find sketches of gate-lodges, very charming in their details, many of them; but I find little or no mention of those modest gates which must hang at every man’s door-yard—those unpretending swinging barriers, by which every country house-holder is shut off from the world, and by which he is joined to the world. They may be made to give a good deal of expres- 82 ADVICE FOR LACKLAND sion to a place; they have almost as much to do with it, in fact, as a man’s mouth has to do with the expression of his face. There was once a gate called “Beautiful,” by which a lame man lay—we all remember that; there was once too a certain “wicket- gate’ (with a great light shining somewhere beyond it) which Evangelist pointed out to Christian, whereby the pilgrim might enter upon the path to the Celestial City—we all remember that gate; and there was another gate, belonging to our days of roundabouts and satchels, by which we went out, noon and morning, by which we returned, noon and evening—on which we swung upon stolen occasions—a gate whereat we loitered with other philosophers, in other roundabouts and with other green satchels, and discussed prob- lems of marbles, or base-ball, or of the weather,—a gate through which led the path to the first home; well, I think everybody re- members such a gate. And thus it happens that the subject has a certain poetic and romantic interest which cannot be wholly ignored, and which I wonder that the land- scapists have so indifferently treated. Fancy, if you can, a rural home,—without its gateway—lying all abroad upon a com- 83 OUT-OF-TOWN PLACES mon! The great charm of privacy is gone utterly; and no device of shrubbery, or hedge, can make good the loss of some little wicket which will invite approach, and be a barrier against too easy familiarity. The creak of the gate-hinge is a welcome to the visitor, and as he goes out, the latch clicks an adieu. But there are all sorts of gates, as there are all sorts of welcomes; there is, first, your inhospitable one, made mostly, I should say, | of matched boards, with a row of pleasant iron spikes running along its top, and no architectural decorations of pilaster or panel can possibly remove its thoroughly inhos- pitable aspect. It belongs to stable-courts or jail-yards, but never to a home or a garden. Again, there are your ceremonious gates, of open-work indeed, but ponderous, and most times scrupulously closed; the very opening of them is a fatiguing ceremonial, and there is nothing like a lively welcome in the dull clang of their ponderous latches. Next, there is your simple, unpretending, rural gate, giving promise of unpretending rural beauties—homely in all its aspect, and giving foretaste of the best of homeliness within. And I makea wide distinction here be- tween the simple rurality at which I have 84 ADVICE FOR LACKLAND hinted, and that grotesqueness which is com- passed by scores of crooked limbs and knots wrought into labyrinthine patterns, which puz- zle the eye, more than they please. All crooked things are not necessarily charming, and the better kind of homeliness is measured by something besides mere roughness. Lastly, there is your hospitable gate, with its little rooflet stretched over it, as if to invite a stranger loiterer to partake at his will of that much of the hospitalities of the home. Even the passing beggar gathers his tattered garments under it in a sudden shower and blesses the shelter. And I introduce upon the next page a very homely specimen of this class of gates, which I remember was to be seen 85 OUT-OF-TOWN PLACES many years ago somewhere in County Kent, England. Either the sketcher’s work was very bad, or else the engraver has failed to give the char- acter of its rough rooflet; which, if I remem- ber rightly, was but a thatch of broom, or of sedge. Yet who does not see written all over it —plain as it is: Loiter if you like! Come in, if you like! And I love to think that some little maid, under it—in some by-gone year—said her good-night to some parting Leander. Who shall laugh at this, that has ever been young? Are not the little maids and the Leanders always growing up about us? I always felt sure when I found such covered wickets that no curmudgeon lived within. A second example of somewhat more or- derly proportions, but identical in expression, I take from my note-book of travel, finding it 86 ADVICE FOR LACKLAND credited to some little hamlet of Warwick- shire; the posts and supporting arms being of unhewn elm, and the roof a neat thatch of wheat straw, which at the time of my visit was gray and mossy. Has not somebody somewhere a cottage home whose homeliness would be enforced and beautified by such a cosey covered wicket of thatch? Thatch, indeed, does not take on with us, and under our climate, that mellow mossiness which belongs to it in Devonshire. Our winds are too high and drying, and the sun too hot. Still, a thatch properly laid will, with us, keep its evenness for a great number of years; and for the benefit of those living within easy reach of the coast, I may say that nothing is better for this purpose than the sedge (so called) of the salt marshes 87 OUT-OF-TOWN PLACES In default of thatch, however, very pretty rural effects may be made by slabs (being log-trimmings from the saw-mills), or oak bark (which is almost imperishable), or by scalloped shingles. An example of the effect of these latter I venture to give. In this case, all beneath the roof is of cedar with the bark undisturbed, while the posts above the roof are trimmed to a square, taper- ing and carrying a ball—the balls and the tapering extremities of the posts being a light buff, and the roof red. The effect is exceed- ingly good—though it mixes the rustic and more finished work in a way which the pro- fesional artists do not venture upon. But I 88 ADVICE FOR LACKLAND have lived long enough to know that profes- sional traditions in all the arts—landscape gardening and architecture among the rest— stand in the way of a great many beauties. Every country-place wants its special art-gar- niture (without respect to traditions) as much as every pretty face wants its special environ- ments of colors and of laces. When, therefore, I hear a man declaim against white gates, or red gates, or rustic gates, or stone gates, per se, without reference to their position, or sug- gestive aims, I condemn him as an iron meth- odist, who apprehends no beauty by intuition, but only by force of precept. Perhaps I have myself rather hastily con- demned all close gates, as belonging to stable- courts and jail-yards. There are situations, certainly, where they are not only allowable, (as upon back-entrances of gardens,) but where they contribute eminently to the air of privacy which must mark every true home. And I am reminded, in this connection, of a certain garden-door-way, which I saw near Keightley, in Yorkshire; it opened upon a narrow lane in the rear of the suburban grounds to which it was attached, and showed such homely, resolute determination to work - up into tasteful shape the stones abounding in 89 OUT-OF-TOWN PLACES the neighborhood, that I made a_ rough draught of it upon the spot. This picturesque use of rock material is appreciated and practised in many parts of G4 Oey ee, i) coer EOS ait eee al ge7il ea ee eae esiers Gas eriaa alas SORT] eo eS ES act orants Uses OR ee Gms 7 CLA ET Oy | | i | ) | 4 | | ) Great Britain. Thus in the neighborhood of the slate quarries of North Wales, near Caer- narvon, the refuse material from the ledges is laid up by the adjoining proprietors in snug fences, that appear at a little distance away, to be crowned with a regularly castellated bat- tlement. This effect is produced simply by alternating cubical and oblong fragments of slate rock upon the summit of the wall. In Derbyshire, again, I have seen a kindred effect wrought by the tasteful disposition of the big boulders which are scattered pretty thickly over some of the high moorlands of that country. In Cumberland and Westmore- land, indications of the same rural adaptive- ness abound go ADVICE FOR LACKLAND Thus much has been suggested at present by our friend Lackland’s request that I should supply for him the plan of a gate. We will now see what can be done for his special needs. GATEWAYS AND RURAL CARPENTRY On turning back to page of ground plan, the reader will perceive, from the drawing of my friend Lackland’s grounds, that he has need of three principal gateways—a small one for the footpath, being the entrance nearest to the village, a larger one for his drive, and a third opening for his grass field. This last he will not have very frequent occasion to use; for that reason the gateway should not be very striking, or seem specially to invite entrance. Supposing that the occupant has availed him- self of the old walls about the premises to build a substantial stone fence along a con- siderable portion of his front, I should advise that he mark this field entrance by two sub- stantial columns built of the same material, and place between them a gate or movable panel of fence, constructed of cedar poles, or gl OUT-OF-TOWN PLACES such other homely or lasting wood as may be most available. I give a rough drawing of what I would propose. I think that everyone will admit that these columns have a tasteful effect, and add largely to the architectural character of the wall. And it is a great mistake to suppose, as many do, that such columns require hammered stone, or that it is requisite that they be laid up in mortar, and by an adept in masonry. All that is required is, that stones carrying fairly developed angles should be laid aside for its construction—that the face of the col- umn should project three or four inches from the surface of the wall in order to mark dis- tinctly its faces, and that it be bound in firmly, (a thing which the engraver has omitted to do,) with such long stones as are available. A _ boulder sufficiently round to crown the struct- ure may be found in almost any rod of old country wall; and if it be well covered with g2 ADVICE FOR LACKLAND lichens, so much the better. The great error in such structures, is in attempting too great nicety, which, by contrast with the homely farmwork around it, offends more than it gratifies. In humble art, as well as in the highest art, there must be keeping. But though finical nicety is to be avoided, and such hammering out of faces, as to in- crease largely the expense, and defeat the econ- omy which should declare itself unmistakably in all rural decoration, there should be no sac- rifice of solidity. A column that will not stand for years, had better never be built. The country wall-layers, ordinarily, are in- disposed to attempt such work, either doubt- ing their own capacity, or considering it an encroachment upon the province of the mason. The consequence has been, in my own expe- rience, that of some half-dozen or more which stand here and there about the fields at Edgewood, everyone has been laid up with my own hands; and I may aver, with some pride, that after eight or ten winters of frost, they still stand firmly and compact. One only has lost its capping boulder, which cer- tain errant boys could not resist the tempta- tion to tumble off, that they might watch its roll down a pretty declivity of a hundred rods, 93 OUT-OF-TOWN PLACES or more. I wish I had no more grievous charges to bring against errant boys. For the entrance to the drive-way, sup- posing that my friend Lackland has plenty of cedar at hand, I give another design: And I have this much to say in favor of it, that a similar one was erected at Edgewood eleven years since, and its gates have swung back and forth a dozen times a day, without, as yet, a single hammer’s stroke in way of repair. Two half-inch iron rods were passed through each gate and fastened by a nut upon the longer upright sapling. Once or twice it has been necessary to give this nut a turn or two with the wrench, and this completes the tale of the attention it has required. 94 ADVICE FOR LACKLAND The first panel (and part of the second) of the fence to which it is attached, is given to show its relation to its surroundings, and the perfect simplicity of detail which belongs to it. The posts are firm and cannot swag. The gates are light—perfectly braced, and held in place by the iron rods which pass through them. They bid fair to last until the sap portion of the wood (cedar) is fairly rot- ted away. The three horizontal arms are in- serted with tenons; the braces are fitted only with the gouge, and made fast with wire nails. And here I wish to enter a plea for the wire nails used all over the continent of'Europe, but, as yet, little known with us; though, I believe, they are to be found in the larger hardware shops of New York. The advantage of them is, that they can be driven without splitting the wood—that they can be clenched effectively, and—what is of importance in light work —they add very little to the weight. For the construction of interior rustic work of twigs and bark they are invaluable. They may be found of all sizes, from that of a cambric needle (and a half-inch in length) to that cor- responding to our “ten pennies,” and lighter by two-thirds than these. The third gate is equally simple, and in way 95 OUT-OF-TOWN PLACES of ornamentation, has only its little rooflet. The design represents this as of equal width with the gate; but a somewhat better effect PPT fiers z Bg ta at Bip tc gh i} i p bata * ‘i pene wat, may be secured by an_ extension of the roof some six or eight inches on either side, in which case, of course, the posts must be cut off even with the ridge, and finials of cedar sticks adjusted at either end. This bit of roof over the gateway gives not only the hospitable air, which I remarked upon in the previous chapter, but serves to protect the rustic work from the weather to such a degree that the bark will hold fast for double the length of time. In all such work, great annoyance is given by an insect which devours the sapwood under the bark, thus loosening the latter, and filling it with an ugly yellow powder. I have observed, in my own 96 ADVICE FOR LACKLAND experience, that the ravages of this insect are much more decided and constant upon cedar cut in the winter, than upon such as has been cut in the growing season of the year. The fact, however, may be accidental, and I must confess utter ignorance of the habits and tastes of this disagreeable grub. The virtue of all such rustic work as I have commented upon, lies in its exceeding sim- plicity, joined to great serviceableness. Home repairs do not tell badly on it; the joints need not be arranged with mathematical precision ; the materials are near at hand and inexpen- sive; the creeping vines cling to it lovingly; it wears age with a veteran sturdiness. I am by no means prepared to say that my friend Lackland will adopt my views on this head. I suspect that his country or city joiner, when confronted with the hints I have thrown out in these gate sketches, (they are really intended for nothing more than hints), will shake his head doubtfully, and lay before my friend some stupendous affair of carpen- try, with an infinitude of mouldings, which, to his eye, is vastly finer. And I shall expect Lackland to yield to the charm of the rec- tangular elevations that are set before him; or, if he absolutely insists upon the working up 97 OUT-OF-TOWN PLACES of what stray cedars, or other wood, may be about the premises, I shall expect his carpen- ter to make such a bugbear of the exuding pitch, and of the impossibility of bringing his square and his gauge into requisition, and (if he goes on) to keep so resolutely by a deter- mination to counterfeit, as far as possible, all the mouldings of his joiner work, that he will construct a cumbrous affair, at such great cost of labor, as will disgust my friend Lackland, and at such cost of simplicity as will disgust every tasteful observer. What then? There can be no doubt of the possibility of working this unruly material into tasteful forms, that shall have practical and economic uses; but in the ordering of this matter, as in the ordering of a great many others, connected with rural life, if the proprietor can put no zeal into his in- tention, and has no eye for the charms of homeliness, let him abandon the pursuit. A good fence of white pickets, with gate to match, will keep the pigs out, and the young Lacklands in. ADVICE FOR LACKLAND VILLAGE AND COUNTRY ROAD-SIDE Every Christian dweller, in village or in country, owes a duty to his road-side; which, if he neglects, he relapses—horticulturally speaking—into heathenism. This duty is to maintain order and neatness; and he is no more relieved of this duty because the high- way is assigned over to public uses, than he is relieved of any other duty whose accomplish- ment must of neckssity contribute to the pub- lic convenience and public education, as well as to his own. Because my front entry is shared, for all legitimate purposes, with my friends and chance callers, shall I therefore treat it with neglect and allow the dust and cobwebs to accumulate about it, while I en- sconce myself churlishly in my well-swept den? Yet, every visitor—unless he be a vag- abond fruit-stealer, or an equally vagabond bird-killer—comes up the road-way: and if you choose to put him through a course of scorie, and old tins, and tansy tufts, and briary heaps of stones along your road-side, — you might as benevolently and as prudently, (so far as the growing tastes of your children 99 OUT-OF-TOWN PLACES are concerned,) lead him up to your front door between piles of gaping clam shells. There is no rule of order, or of taste, or of benevolence, that belongs to a man’s door- yard, that does not belong to his road-side. It is true, there is a liability outside the fence to the incursions of road-menders, who are, for the most part, barbarians; but there is no more reason for not covering or removing the odious traces of these animals, than for not removing the disagreeable traces of oth- ers. An ugly yellow scar in the turfy mound that supports, maybe, your garden wall, by due attention, and a shovelful or two of fresh mould, can be thoroughly obliterated; but if submitted to the swash of the rains, it gapes and throws off a great ooze of yellow mud, which, next spring time, tempts the foraging shovel of the road-menders again, and in a few years your whole road-side is a disorderly line of jagged earth-pits, with raw boulderscluster- ing at the front of each. A little timely care, often repeated, may at last win upon the re- gard of the barbarian followers of the scraper and hoe, and they may grow unwittingly into a respect for your love of order. Such mira- cles are subject of record. A safer alterna- tive, however, if your road-side be no more 100 ADVICE FOR LACKLAND extensive than that of my friend Lack- land, is to supply, at your own cost, an occa- sional defect in the road-bed from the screenings of the coal, or the rakings of the garden, by which you may easily secure so even and compact a surface as to escape the at- tention of the road viewers. If, on the other hand, the reach be long, an arrangement can sometimes be made with town-officials to keep its whole extent in perfect condition, for a sum which, if it be small, will be remunerative in the exemption it gives. Nothing contributes more to an air of thrift than neat and orderly road-sides; I would not urge any finical arrangement of turf, or clip- ping of the road-track, but only such judi- cious combing down of unsightly roughnesses, such watchfulness against encumbrance, such adaptation of existing shade trees, or such planting of others, as shall show that the ad- joining proprietor does not limit his charities by his own walls, or his eye for neatness by the line of highway. Once upon a time, when the writer was in search of a country homestead, he remembers deciding against certain “strongly recom- mended” places, because the highroad to them led through a considerable array of suburban IOI OUT-OF-TOWN PLACES houses, whose occupants made it a religious duty to throw all their offal in the public street and to cumber the same locality with their hoop-poles, or their wood-piles, or their shoe-parings. It is so hard to unlearn such a noisome depravity of taste! Many of the small towns on the banks of the Hudson (near to New York) and in New Jersey, offer an extended exhibition of this sort of local econ- omy and fragrant treasures. And I have sometimes thought that New York citizens, by reason of the offal in their streets, become quite agreeably wonted to such disposition of cast-away bones and filth, and scent it, upon their drives to their country homes, with an appetizing relish. But in the name of all true rural delight, I beg to enter protest, and to urge every man who has his homestead under green trees, to use what influence may lie in him (albeit he is not select-man) to abate the nuisance, and to make our village and country road-sides smack of order and thrift and cleanliness. Good example will do very much in way of reform—more, in most in- stances, than any zeal of impeachment. If you approach an old-school neighbor, who has in- herited the propensity to cumber the highway before his door with all conceivable odds and 102 ADVICE FOR LACKLAND ends, with any suggestions for a change on the score of neatness or good looks, you will » find him, very likely, fortified with his own “idees’”’ on that subject—‘‘idees,” which, like the independent American citizen that he is, he is in no mood to relinquish. “Hecan’t git a livin’ by looks,” and withsuch speech shrewdly uttered, and emphasized with a rattling horse-laugh, he floors your blandest suggestions. Yet a wholesome attention to neatness on your own score, which shall creep up to the edge of his enclosures, and work by contrast, will in time operate insensibly upon him.—There is something after all “very catching’’ in good order. But most of all, the co-operation of all the town’s people, who are disposed to neatness, is to be relied upon. Every country place of any size should have its “village-improve- ment society,’ to look after the planting of shade trees, the proper condition of high- ways, the arrest of stray cattle, and to discuss and carry into execution whatever may pro- mote the thrift and attractive appearance of the place,—whether in the way of new streets, laying down of side-walks, or removal of of- fensive debris or noxious weeds. I commend most heartily to Lackland the instigation and 103 OUT-OF-TOWN PLACES establishment of such a society. And if such a club could have their little room for occa- sional meeting, and stock it with a few valu- able horticultural and agricultural books and papers, so much the better. An entirely new air might be given to very many of our slat- ternly country villages in a few years, by the energetic operations of such a club, and the value and attractiveness of property be cor- respondingly increased. Most of the North-eastern States have, within a few years, by legislative enactment, outlawed all strolling cattle. This is well, and relieves from a great nuisance. But in not a few broad-streeted towns there has sprung up in consequence, a rank growth of weeds, (for- merly kept down by grazing cows, ) which, as it seems no individual’s concern, are allowed to ripen their seeds, thus multiplying next year’s labor in the fields, besides offering a ter- ribly straggling appearance. In fault of such co-operative club as I have hinted at, (which should order them cut at common expense, ) every man should see to his own frontage. If such nursery beds had not been tolerated, we should long ago, I think, have scotched the Canada thistle, if not that detestable weed, the wild carrot. 104 ADVICE FOR LACKLAND At a considerable remove from towns, we frequently come upon some quiet streak of country road, charmingly bordered with a wild sylvan tangle of hickories, sumacs, bram- bles, cedars, and all festooned perhaps with the tendrils of the wild grape, or the bitter- sweet. Neither economy or good taste com- mand the removal of these, even when border- ing cultivated fields, except (which rarely oc- curs) they harbor bad weeds to spread within the enclosure. Nay, in nine cases in ten they furnish a grateful shelter from the winds,—a matter too little appreciated as yet, either by fruit growers or grain growers. And on the score of taste, no more charming contrast can be devised than that of such wild profusion of growth, with the neat and orderly array of crops beyond. I can recall no more delightful rural scenes in England, than certain ones in Devonshire, where, after strolling along some admirable bit of Macadam, with high hedge- rows on either side, sprinkled with primroses, and tasselled with nodding ferns, and wild with tangled thicket of bramble, I have, with a leap, broken through and seen be- yond,—so near the road I could have tossed my hat into the field,—such trim lines of em- erald wheat,—without ever a weed or a crook, 105 OUT-OF-TOWN PLACES —as made the heart rejoice. The high hedge- rows are indeed now being cut down through- out the best cultivated districts, but only for the economy of land, the surface occupied be- ing needed. But while we have country roads from five to six rods wide, the same objection does not obtain with us. Observe again, I beg, that I do not counsel the planting of any such road-side tangles, or indeed the sparing of them, when any better use can be made of the land. I only plead for their continued presence in place of a rude hurly-burly of stubs and harsh boulders, to which condition many farmers reduce them, and call it a judi- cious “‘slicking up.” I have run widely away from the little home- stead of my friend Lackland ; so widely indeed, that I shall not soon encounter him again. Whenever that may be, I trust I may hear that his pelargoniums are all a-bloom—that his pig and his cow are thriving—his road-side in order,— his Patrick a jewel of a man, and that all rural felicities attend him. Note—I have used the term “Alderney” cattle, as applying in the old sense to all cattle of Channel Island descent: though, as a matter of fact, we rarely en- counter any true “Alderneys.” The talk nowadays is of Jerseys and Guernseys. 106 WAY-SIDE HINTS TALK ABOUT PORCHES A country house without a porch is like a man without an eyebrow; it gives expression, and gives expression where you most want it. The least office of a porch is that of affording protec- tion against the rain-beat and the sun-beat. It is an interpreter of character; it humanizes bald walls and windows; it emphasizes archi- tectural tone; it gives hint of hospitality; it is a hand stretched out (figuratively and lum- beringly, often) from the world within to the world without. At a church door even, a porch seems to me to be a blessed thing, and a most worthy and patent demonstration of the overflowing Chris- tian charity, and of the wish to give shelter. Of all the images of wayside country churches which keep in my mind, those hang most per- sistently and agreeably, which show their jut- ting, defensive rooflets to keep the brunt of 109 OUT-OF-TOWN PLACES the storm from the church-goer while he yet fingers at the latch of entrance. I doubt if there be not something beguiling in a porch over the door of a country shop— something that relieves the odium of bargain- ing, and imbues even the small grocer with a flavor of cheap hospitalities. The verandas (which is but a long translation of porch) that stretch along the great river front of the Bellevue Hospital, diffuse somehow a glad- some cheer over that prodigious caravansary of the sick; and I never see the poor creatures in their bandaged heads and their flannel gowns enjoying their convalescence in the sun- shine of those exterior corridors, but I reckon the old corridors for as much as the young doctors, in bringing them from convalescence into strength, and a new fight with the bedevil- ments of the world. What shall we say, too, of inn porches? Does anybody doubt their fitness? Is there any question of the fact—with any person of rea- sonably imaginative mood—that Falstaff and Nym and Bardolph, and the rest, once lolled upon the benches of the porch that overhung the door of the Boar’s Head Tavern, East- cheap? Any question about a porch, and a generous one, at the Tabard, Southwark— 110 WAY-SIDE HINTS presided over by that wonderful host who so quickened the story-telling humors of the Canterbury pilgrims of Master Chaucer? Then again, in our time, if one were to peel away the verandas and the exterior corridors from our vast watering-place hostelries, what an arid baldness of wall and of character would be left! All sentiment, all glowing mem- ories, all the music of girlish footfalls, all echoes of laughter and banter and rollicking mirth, and tenderly uttered vows would be gone. King David, when he gave out to his son Solomon the designs for the building of the Temple, included among the very first of them (1 Chron. xxviii. 11) the “pattern of a porch.” It is not, however, of porches of Shit- tim-wood and of gold that I mean to talk just now—nor even of those elaborate architec- tural features which will belong of necessity to the entrance-way of every complete study of a country house. I plead only for some lit- tle mantling hood about every exterior door- way, however humble. There are hundreds of naked, vulgar-look- ing dwellings, scattered up and down our country high-roads, which only need a little deft and adroit adaptation of the hospitable II! OUT-OF-TOWN PLACES feature which I have made the subject of this paper, to assume an air of modest grace, in place of the present indecorous exposure of a wanton. But let no one suppose that porch-building, as applied to the homely lines of a staid old house of thirty or fifty years since, can be safely given over to the judgment of our pres- ent ambitious carpenters. Ten to one, they will equip a barren simplicity with an odious tawdriness. A town-bred girl will slip into the millinery bedizenment of the town haber- dasher without making show of any odious incongruity; but let some buxom, round- cheeked, stout-ankled lass of the back country adopt the same, and we laugh at the enormity. In the same way, every man of a discerning taste must smile derisively at the adornment of an unpretentious farm-house with the startling decorative features of the shop join- ery of the day—the endless scroll-work (done cheaply, by new methods of machine sawing) —the portentous moulding—the arches, whose outlines are from Byzantium or the new Louvre—columns whose proportions are im- proved from the Greeks—capitals whose fret- ting sculpture outranks the acanthus. Seri- ously, I think the carpenters, if left to their II2 WAY-SIDE HINTS own efflorescence, nowadays, will out-match the loudest extravagances of the milliners. We seem to have drifted into an epoch of the largest and crudest flamboyance—in morals, in brokerage, and in carpentry. A sober, sim- ple-minded man is worse than lost amongst the new brood of architectural improvers. Notwithstanding all this, I venture to plead for a wholesome severity of taste; if simple material is to be dealt with, it should be dealt with simply. If we have a homely old-style house to modify and render attractive, do not let us make its modification a mockery by the blazon of Chinese scroll-work. There is a way of dealing with what is old, in keeping with what is old, and of dealing with what is homely, in keeping with what is homely. A sensible middle-aged lady of the old school, if she have occasion to present herself afresh in society, and assert her prerogatives once more, will not surely do so by tying tow- bags at the back of her head and widen- ing her skirts indecorously. But she will bring her old manner with her, and so equip the old manner by the devices of a judicious art that we shall wonder and admire in spite of ourselves. In illustration of my views about homely 113 OUT-OF-TOWN PLACES porches, I venture to give upon the next page a rough drawing of one of the plainest con- ceivable. It is a sort of cross between the Dutch stoop and the lumberingrooflet whichin old times overhung many a doorway of a New England farm-house. It offers shelter and rest; it is in no way pretentious; it declares its character at a glance; you cannot laugh at it for any air of assumption that it carries; you can find no such shapen thing in any of the architectural books. What then? Must it needs be condemned for this reason? I do not, indeed, commend it for any beauty, per se, but as being an honest, well-intended shelter and resting-place, which could be grafted upon many an old-style farm-house, with bare door, and set off its barrenness, with quaint, simple lines of hospitality, that would add more to the real effect of the home than a cumbrous series of joiner’s arches of tenfold its cost. In the door itself I have dropped a hint of many an ancient door which confronts the high-road in a score of New England vil- ages. People do not instruct their carpenters to build such doors now; yet I can conceive of worse ones, glazed up and down, with blue and yellow and green glass, in most irritating conjunction. I do not know that I would ab- 114 i WAY-SIDE HINTS solutely advise the building of those ancient divided doors with their diamond “lights ;” but wherever they show their quaint faces, looking out tranquilly upon the clash and tur- moil of our latter half of the century, I would certainly cherish them; or if I hung a porch over them, it would be such a one as should be in keeping with their quaintness, and yet offer all promise—which a sensible porch should offer—of shelter and rest. There is a village I never pass through but I ache to clap over one or more of its old-time doors (now bat- tling without vestige or rooflet, with sun and rain) some such quaint, overhanging beacon of hospitality as I have pictured; I am sure the houses would take on a double homeli- 115 OUT-OF-TOWN PLACES ness, and I should think of all the inmates as growing thenceforth, every day, more kindly, and every day mellower in their charities. I next give a sketch of a little stone porch, which, if I do not mistake, is taken from some stone cottage in Cumberland County, Eng- land. It belongs, certainly, by its whole air and by its arrangement, to a country where stones of good, straight-splitting quality (such as gneiss) are plentiful, and are used for un- pretending cottage architecture. It would seem to have pertained to a house of very modest character and to one whose position and exposure demanded special shelter. I think it may offer a hint, at least, of the proper use of similar material in our country. We have not half learned yet all that may be ac- complished in domestic architecture, with the wealth of stones scattered over our fields. Dear lumber is teaching us somewhat; but necessity will presently teach us more. The great cost of mason-work is in the way of any present large use of stone for building pur- poses, least of all such purpose as a cottage porch. But with straight-cleaving stone at hand, such a porch as I have drawn could be put together, with all its real effect (though not perhaps a great nicety), by common 116 WAY-SIDE HINTS wall-layers; and it is for this reason I have introduced it, hoping that some intelligent pro- prietor who is in the neighborhood of quarries will put his hands to the task of imitation. I give still another design copied rudely from an actual porch at Ambleside (West- moreland) ; it was shading the door, some fif- teen years since, of a village curate. There were vines clambering over it, which I have omitted, in order to give a full idea of the simplicity of its construction. I know it is the way of the grand architects to sneer at all rustic work as child’s play; but I cannot see the pertinence of their sneers; it is quite true that rustic work will not last forever—neither will we; house-holders and architects, and all the rest of us, have the worms gnawing at our vitals, and the bark falling away, and the 117 OUT-OF-TOWN PLACES end coming swift. But a good, stanch tree trunk, cut in its best season (late autumn), is a very tolerable sort of God’s work, and, a )) seems to me, can be put to very picturesque uses. I don’t think the curate’s porch is a bad one; as a hint for better ones, I think it is specially good. Upon the question of the use of right mate- rial for rustic work, there is very much to be said; here, I have only space for a suggestion or two. There are some trees which hold their bark wonderfully well; of such is the sassa- fras, which, after its tenth year, takes on a picturesque roughness and a _ rhinoceros-like 118 WAY-SIDE HINTS thickness of skin, which admirably fits it for rustic use. The white ash, assuming after fifteen years a similar thickness of outer cov- ering, holds its coat with almost equal tenac- ity. The ordinary “pig-nut” hickory holds its bark well; the oak does not; neither does the chestnut. The cedar is perhaps most com- monly employed for rustic decoration; cut in the proper season, and due precaution being taken, by coating of oil or varnish, against the ravages of the grubs (which have an uncom- mon appetite for the sapwood of cedar), it may hold its shaggy epidermis for a long time. I would suggest to those using it for archi- tectural purposes a wash of crude petroleum; it is a wash that, so far as I know, is proof against the appetite of all insects. Its objec- tionable odor soon passes away. Very many of the smooth-barked trees, such as_ beech, birch, maple, and sycamore, will hold their bark firmly if precautions be taken to exclude the air by varnishing the ends and all such cuts as have been made by the excision of a limb. Old and slow-growing wood will, it must be observed, have less shrinkage, and maintain a better bark surface, than young saplings or trees of rapid growth. But, irrespective of all questions of durability, is there not some- 119 OUT-OF-TOWN PLACES thing rurally attractive in this unpretending porch, whose columns have come from the forest, and whose overarching arms are the arms that overarch God’s temples of the wood? Not lacking, surely, some elements of the beautiful in itself; and at the door of a village clergyman, with the ivy showing its glossy leaflets in wealthy labyrinth, and the convolvulus twining up at the base upon whatever vine-hold may offer, and handing out its purple chalices to catch the dews of the morning—is there nothing to be emulated in this? Let those who love Nature’s simplest graces, answer. ON NOT DOING ALL AT ONCE THERE are a great many ardently progressive people who will be shocked by the caption under which I write. The current American theory is, that if a thing needs to be done, it should be done at once,—with railroad speed, no matter whether it regards politics, morals, religion, or horticulture. And I wantonly take the risk of being condemned for an arrant conservative, when I express my belief that 120 WAY-SIDE HINTS there are a great many good objects in life which are accomplished better by gradual pro- gression toward them than by sudden seizure. I shall not stay to argue the point with respect to negro suffrage, or female suffrage, or a temperance reformation, or the clearing out of Maximilian’s Mexican Imperialism— which are a little removed from the horticultural arena, where our humbler questions are dis- cussed—but I shall urge a graduation and cul- mination of triumphs in what relates to rural life and its charms. One meets, from time to time, with a gen- tleman from the city, smitten with a sudden rural fancy, who is in eager search for a place “made to his hand,” with the walks all laid down, the entrance-ways’ established, the dwarf trees regularly planted, the conserva- tory a-steam, and the crocheted turrets fret- ting the sky-line of the suburban villa. But I never heard of any such seeker after per- fected beauties who was an enthusiast in coun- try pursuits, or who did not speedily grow weary of his phantasy. He may take a pride in his cheap bargain; he may regale himself with the fruits and enjoy the vistas of his arbor; but he has none of that exquisitely- wrought satisfaction which belongs to the I2I OUT-OF-TOWN PLACES man who has planted his own trees, who has laid down his own walks, and who has seen, year after year, successive features of beauty in shrub, or flower, or pathway, mature under his ministering hand, and lend their at- tractions. to the cumulating charms of his home. The man of capital, who buys into an established business, where the system is per- fected, the trade regular and constant, the de- tails unvaried, may very possibly congratulate himself upon the security of his gains; but he knows nothing of that ardent and intoxicating enthralment which belongs to one who has grown up with the business—suggested its enterprises—shared its anxieties, and by thought, and struggle, and adventure, made himself a part of its successes. A man may enjoy a little complacency in wearing the coat of another, (if he gets it cheap, ) but there can hardly be much pride in it. Therefore, I would say to any one who is thoroughly in earnest about a country home—make it yourself. Xenophon, who lived in a time when Greeks were Greeks, ad- vised people in search of a country place to buy of a slatternly and careless farmer, since in that event they might be sure of mak- ing their labor and care work the largest re- I22 WAY-SIDE HINTS sults. Cato,! on the other hand, who repre- sented a more effeminate and scheming race, advised the purchase of a country home from a good farmer and judicious house-builder, so that the buyer might be sure of nice culture and equipments,—possibly at a bargain. It illustrates, I think, rather finely, an essential difference between the two races and ages :— the Greek, earnest to make his own brain tell, and the Latin, eager to make as much as he could out of the brains of other people. I must say that I like the Greek view best. I never knew of an enthusiast in any pur- suit—whether grape-growing, or literature, or ballooning, or politics,—who did not find his chiefest pleasure in forecasting successes, not yet made, but only dimly conceived of, and ardently struggled for. The more enthusi- asm, the more evidence, I should say, in a gen- eral way, of incompletion and apparent confu- sion. Show me a cultivator whose vines are well trained by plumb and line, whose trees are every one planted mathematically in quincunx 1] shall make no apology for the introduction of these two heathen names, since both authors have written cap- itally well on subjects connected with husbandry and ru- ral life. 123 OUT-OF-TOWN PLACES order, whose dwarfs are all clipped and braced after the best pyramidal pattern, and I feel somehow that he is a fashionist, that he re- poses upon certain formulas beyond which he does not think it necessary to explore. But where I see, with an equal degree of attention, irregularity and variety of treatment,—ten- drils a-droop and fruit-spurs apparently neg- lected,—I am not unfrequently impressed with the belief that the cultivator is regardless of old and patent truths, because their truth is proven and because his eye and mind are on the strain toward some new development. When a good, kind horticultural gentleman takes me by the button-hole, and tells me by the hour of what length it is necessary to cut the new wood in order to insure a good start for the buds at the base, and how the sap has a tendency to flow strongest into the taller shoots, and other such truisms, which have been in the books these ten years, I listen re- spectfully, but cannot help thinking,—‘“‘my dear good sir, you will never set the river a-fire.”’ Nor indeed do we want the river set on fire; but we want progress. And all I have said thus far is but preliminary to the truth on which I wish to insist,—that a graduated 124 WAY-SIDE HINTS progress is essential to all rational enjoyment, whether in things rural, Christian, or com- mercial. And for this reason I allege that all things which are proper to be done about a country house, are not to be done at once. Half the charm of life in such a home is in every week’s and every season’s succeeding develop- ments. If, for instance, my friend Lackland, whose place I have described in previous pages, had found a landscape gardener capa- ble of inaugurating all the changes I have de- scribed, and had established his garden, his mall, his shrubberies, and had made the cliff in the corner nod with its blooming colum- bines, within a month after occupation, and established his dwarf pears in full growth and fruitage, there may have been a glad surprise; but the very completeness of the change would have left no room for that exhilaration of spir- its, with which we pursue favorite aims to their attainment. No trout fisher, who is worthy the name, wants his creel loaded in the beginning ; he wants the pursuit—the alterna- tions of hope and fear; the coy rest of his fly upon this pool—the whisk of its brown hackle down yonder rapid—its play upon the eddies where possibly some swift strike may be made 125 OUT-OF-TOWN PLACES —the sway of his rod, and the whiz of his reel under the dash of some struggling victim. It is a mistake, therefore, I think, to aim at the completion of a country home in a season, or in two, or some half a dozen. Its attrac- tiveness lies, or should lie, in its prospective growth of charms. Your city home—when once the architect, and plumber, and uphol- sterer have done their work—is in a sense com- plete, and the added charms must lie in the genial socialities and hospitalities with which you can invest it; but with a country home, the fields, the flowers, the paths, the hundred rural embellishments, may be made to develop a constantly recurring succession of attractive features. This year, a new thicket of shrub- bery, or a new gate-way on some foot-path; next year, the investment of some out-lying ledge with floral wonders; the season after may come the establishment of a meadow (by judicious drainage) where some ugly marsh has offended the eye; and the succeeding sum- mer may show the redemption of the harsh briary up-land that you have scourged into fer- tility and greenness. This year, a thatched rooflet to some out-lying stile; next year, a rustic seat under the trees which have begun to offer a tempting shade. This year, the curb- 126 WAY-SIDE HINTS ing of the limbs of some overgrowing poplar ; and next year—if need be—a lopping away of the tree itself to expose a fresher beauty in the shrubbery beneath. Most planters about a courtry home are too much afraid of the axe; yet judicious cut- ting is of as much importance as planting; and I have seen charming thickets shoot up into raw, lank assemblage of boles of trees without grace or comeliness, for lack of cour- age to cut trees at the root. For all good ef- fects of foliage in landscape gardening—after the fifth year—the axe is quite as important an implement as the spade. Even young trees of eight or ten years growth which stool freely —(such as the soft maple, birch, chestnut, and locust,) when planted upon declivities, may often be cut away entirely, with the assurance that the young sprouts, within a season, will more than supply their efficiency. Due care, however, should be taken that such trees be cut either in winter or in early spring, in or- der to insure free stooling, or (as we say) sprouting. The black birch, which I have named, and which is a very beautiful tree—not as yet, I think, fairly appreciated by our land- scapists—will not stool with vigor, if cut after it has attained considerable size; but the sap- 127 OUT-OF-TOWN PLACES lings of three or four years, if cut within a foot of the ground, will branch off into a ram- pant growth of boughs, whose fine spray, even in the winter, is almost equal to its glossy show of summer foliage. I do not know if I have made my case clear; but what I have wished has been to guard purchasers, who are really in earnest, against being disturbed or rebuffed by the rough as- pect of such country places as commend them- selves in other respects. The subjugation of roughness, or rather, the alleviation of it by a thousand little daintinesses of treatment, is what serves chiefly to keep alive interest in a country homestead. I must say, for my own part, that I enjoy often for months together some startling de- fect in my grounds—so deep is my assurance, that two days of honest labor will remove it all, and startle on-lookers by the change. But let no rural enthusiast hope to up-root all the ill-growth, or to smooth all the rough- nesses ina year. He would be none the happier if he could. We find our highest pleasure in conquest of difficulties. And he who has none to conquer, or does not meet them, must be either fool or craven. 128 WAY-SIDE HINTS PLOUGHING AND DRILLED CROPS One of the most striking of those contrasts which arrest the attention of an intelligent agricultural observer, between the tillage of English fields and those of New England, as well as of America generally, is in the matter of plowing. In England, bad plowing is rare; in New England, good plowing is even rarer. Something is to be allowed, of course, for the irregular and rocky surface of new lands, but even upon the best meadow bottoms along our river courses, a clean, straight furrow, well turned, so as to offer the largest possible amount of friable mould for a seed-bed, is a sight so unusual, that in the month of spring travel we might count the number on our fingers. I go still farther, and say—though doubtless offending the patriotic susceptibili- ties of a great many—that not one American farmer in twenty knows what really good plowing is. Over and over, the wiseacres at the county fairs give their first premiums to the man who, by a little deft handling of the plow, can turn a flat furrow, and who wins his honors by his capacity to hide every vestige of the stubble, and to leave an utterly 129 OUT-OF-TOWN PLACES level surface. But a flat furrow, with ordi- nary implements, involves a broad cut and a consequent diminution of depth. The perfec- tion of plowing upon sward-land implies, on the contrary, little pyramidal ridgelets of mould, running like an arrow’s flight the full length of the field,—all which a good cross- harrowing will break down into fine and even tilth, like a garden-bed. Yet again and again, I have seen such plowing, by Scotch adepts, condemned by the county wise men for its un- evenness. The flat furrow is not, indeed, without its uses under certain conditions of the land, and with special objects in view— as, for instance, where, by a fall plowing, one wishes a partial disintegration of the turf, in view of a “turning under” of the whole sur- face upon the succeeding spring for a crop of roots. This is practised upon the island of Jersey (so famous for its dairy stock) with great success. The sod is “skimmed” (such is their term) in the month of November or December, and with the opening of spring all is turned under by a plow, which, so far as I have observed, is peculiar to that island, and which works ten inches in depth, and requires a team of four horses for its effective use. I must have a word or two to say here in re- 130 A at Bi: a te ee Ys Fe ee Te a er CIT A See ee ys et tm Lr ae Oe aE RTO ae a NE TP (ie St RRP ne Re Se an eS a NS SS SN er een eye si SF 3 WAY-SIDE HINTS gard to American plows, which, from the fact that they have received occasional commenda- tory prizes from foreign committees, have been counted by the sanguine superior to all other implements of the name, and gushing orators have lavished brilliant periods upon our supe- riority to the world in this branch of agricul- tural mechanism. Nothing surely can exceed the best American plows in their adaptation to present American needs. They are light, com- pact, strong, and in rough lands are by half more manageable than the best English imple- ments. But supposing a great reach of well- tilled and perfectly cleared field, and the im- proved iron Scotch plow will lay a far more true and even furrow with one half the expen- diture of manual force. Under such circum- stances, the great weight of the Scotch im- plement, added to its carefully adjusted poise, counts in its favor. We shall gain nothing by denying this and by exaggerating the value of our wooden framework, which has been suggested at once by the cheapness of timber material and by the exigencies of a rough country. Nor have I any manner of doubt that as our culture ripens into seizure of all economic methods, our implement makers will adapt themselves to the new demands with 131 OUT-OF-TOWN PLACES that shrewdness which has thus far been so characteristic of their efforts. Again, we have no regularly educated plow- men in America. Every man who farms five acres of land thinks he can plow—nay, he is in doubt if anybody in the world can do it bet- ter. But good plowing is a thing of educa- tion, as much as good preaching, or carpenter- ing, or shoemaking, or writing. Nothing but experience gives the final and effective handling. With the wonderful division of labor in all old countries, every agricultural laborer has his special province and domain of work. And itis quite absurd to suppose that a man who plows only a month out of the twelve can have anything like that due know- ledge of the craft, which one acquires by hand- ling the plowstilts every day, for a hundred days in succession. It is quite true that under a European sky—whether of Belgium, France, or England—tillage can be carried on far into the winter, and that, therefore, there is more occasion that a man be educated for the special office of plowing. But whatever occasion may be, the fact remains the same that, while in Belgium and in Great Britain there is an annual crop of apprentices to the plow, in America there is none. Every man who can 132 WAY-SIDE HINTS use a hoe or a pitch-fork is supposed to be a competent tailsman for the plow. The result is—very much bad work. And I would re- spectfully suggest as a subject to which the newly inaugurated Agricultural Colleges may fitly turn a portion of their attention, the indoctrination of a certain number of ambi- tious young farmers (every fall time) into the merits of good plowing. It is not indeed to be expected that the purveyors of this Congres- sional agricultural charity would, in most in- stances, be capable personally of giving the requisite instruction; but they might avail themselves of the offices of here and there a Scotch farmer who would be competent to fulfil the trust, and there are always young Americans willing to learn. Another noticeable feature in European field management, which contrasts strongly with much of our helter skelter planting, is the almost universal adoption of the drill system in the culture of all hoed crops, by virtue of which fertilizing material is applied directly to the plants, and the same distributed —by a transverse plowing the succeeding sea- son—for the benefit of the cereal which comes next in rotation. It may be questionable if our corn crop (maize) will not succeed best 133 OUT-OF-TOWN PLACES under so-called “hill’’ culture, and with a broadcast application of manure, since it is a gross and wide feeder, and demands full flow of sun and air; but in respect to most other hoed crops there can be no doubt of the supe- rior economy, as well as the more orderly ap- pearance of the drill system. Take for instance our ordinary crop of pota- toes, (and I think the details of its manage- ment were never before subject of discussion in a similar context;) four out of ten patches of this worthy esculent, are, in New England soil, put down in wavy lines of hills—irregular in distance, slatternly in culture, and yet in- volving per bushel a far larger expense for til- lage and harvesting, than if dressed, planted, cleaned, and earthed up according to some sys- tem which would demand trim lines, even dis- tances, and a complete shading of the whole ground in the season of their most rampant growth. Perhaps I shall not be counted too in- tolerably practical, if I indicate the actual method of procedure which has been some- times followed under my own observation. - We will suppose that a good surface of sward- land (requiring a lift by reason of its weedi- ness) is turned over lightly, (and flatly, if you please,) in the month of October. Noth- 134 WAY-SIDE HINTS ing offers better pabulum for potatoes, or in- deed almost any crop, than decaying turf. In April the raw surface is levelled with a light Scotch harrow, and thereupon all is turned under seven inches by the best plow at com- mand with three horses abreast; (two will weary of the work). After this the harrow is put on again, up and down, and across. There is no fear of harrowing too much. This being accomplished, and the manure disposed (since March) in huge heaps at either end of the field, three deep furrows are opened at, say, two or three rods apart, by a plowman who can drive his furrow across as straight as the flight of an arrow. Immediately upon the opening of the first, the cart follows and two men strew the open furrow with the half- rotted manure. Another hand follows with a sprinkling of guano and plaster: and still an- other follows to drop the seed. Upon this the plowman laps a furrow in way of cover: two furrows follow as in ordinary plowing, and every fourth one is treated as we have described with ample dressing and seed. Three series of furrows being opened at the start, per- mit the plowman to go his rounds without in- terfering with the planting and dressing. When the whole field is gone over after this 135 OUT-OF-TOWN PLACES system it has simply the appearance of a thor- oughly plowed surface. Nothing more is done until the young shoots begin to appear; at this time the Scotch harrow is put on, and the land completely weeded and levelled, lit- tle or no harm being done by this procedure to the starting crop. The whole field has thus the evenness and the cleanness of a garden. Three weeks later, especially if the season be favorable to weed growth, it may be neces- sary to go between the rows—now most dis- tinctly and luxuriantly marked with tufts of green—with the cultivator; and no future culture is needed until the “earthing up” pro- cess is accomplished witha double-mould-board plow. This done, the crop takes care of itself until harvesting time; no hand hoe, or further culture being essential. I venture to say that the cost per bushel is twenty per cent. less than that by the ordinary, hap-hazard hand til- lage. In addition to this there is the delight to the eye of trim rows of luxuriant foliage, interlacing by degrees, and covering the whole surface with a rich mat of green. If the ex- perts in the growth of this old esculent— whether in Maine or on the Bergen flats— have any fault to find with the method, I will be a patient listener. 136 WAY-SIDE HINTS ROADS AND SHADE I LEAVE potatoes and their culture for a fur- ther consideration of the more striking con- trasts between European and American land- scape. Not the least noticeable of these con- trasts springs from the vast difference in the outlay and treatment of the public roads. A neat and well-ordered public road in any of the rural districts of America is altogether ex- ceptional. Throughout Great Britain a slat- ternly and ill-kept one is most rare. There is no particular reason why a cross-country road for farm traffic only, should have the width of a village street; yet one uniform turnpike rule of breadth seems to have prevailed in the laying down of all country thoroughfares in America: of course, did the disposition exist, it would by no means be so easy a matter to keep a rambling highway of forty or fifty feet in width, in such orderly condition as a narrower one which would amply suffice for the traffic. Neither towns nor turnpike com- panies, who mostly have American roads in charge, have any system in their management or any regard for appearances. Exception is to be made in favor of a few public-spirited 137 OUT-OF-TOWN PLACES townships (in Massachusetts mostly) which have taken this matter boldly in hand and en- couraged order and thrift by wholesome regulations in regard to encroachments upon the highway, and the judicious planting of trees. For the most part, however, American highroads, throughout the rural districts, of- fer to the eye two great slovenly stretches of land, cumbered with stones, offal, wood-yards, and gaping with yellow chasms of earth, from which every spring-time and autumn, a few shovelfuls of clay are withdrawn to patch the road-bed which lies between. Under such conditions the utmost neatness and regularity which the farmer may bestow upon his fields and crops lose half their effect, and the land- scape lacks that completed charm which re- gales the eye along the rural by-roads of Eng- land. While town authorities continue to be ap- pointed for their political aptitude, it is useless to hope for any mending for such defects, or for any deliberate scheme of improvement. The most that can be done is by the combina- tion of adjoining proprietors, in which they have little to hope from the codperation of any town board of advisers. As an instance in point—I have repeatedly offered to under- 138 WAY-SIDE HINTS take full charge of the half-mile of highroad leading through farm lands of my own, guar- anteeing a more serviceable condition than the road has yet known, and a diminution of cost to the town of at least twenty per cent., yet the proposition is ignored. The officials would lose their little private jobbing in way of re- pairs, and some future board might annul any such disorderly and unheard of contracts. I have alluded to the planting of trees along high-ways—a_ practice which many towns have favored by public action, and one con- tributing largely to the enjoyment of a sum- mer’s drive, as well as adding to the inviting aspect of our country villages. The same practice obtains along the great public high- ways of France, but not so generally in Eng- land where the sunshine is not so common or so fierce as to call for special protection. Even the country houses of Great Britain are by no means so shaded as our own; and the most considerable piles of buildings, such as Eaton Hall, Blenheim, Dalkeith, and Burghley House, have hardly a noticeable tree within stone’s throw of their walls. The flower patches, and coppices of shrubbery approach more nearly, and to the garden fronts of those magnificent homes you walk through walls of 139 OUT-OF-TOWN PLACES blooming shrubs. But the full flow of the sun- shine upon the window is a thing courted. Al- lowing for all difference in climate, I think there may be a question if we do not err in this country by over-much shading. A cottage in a wood is a pretty subject for poetry, but it is apt to be uncomfortably damp. And there are village streets with us so embowered that scarce a ray of sunshine can play fairly upon the roofs or fronts of the village houses, from June to October. A summer’s life under such screen cannot contribute to the growth of roses in the cheeks any more than to the growth of roses at the door. There is no provision against agues—whether moral or physical— like a good flow of sunshine. In the establishment of new country houses with us I often observe infinite pains bestowed upon the elaboration of flower-patches, and banks of shrubbery within enjoyable distance of the door, while in the midst of them, or at such little remove as works the same result, a great array of shade trees is planted. After only a few years, these gross feeders have seized upon all the available plant-food within reach, and with the great lusty boughs of the maples waving over his cherished parterres, the proprietor is amazed at the shrinkage of 140 asnoy-AjUunOS UvoLIaWYy uy WAY-SIDE HINTS his flower-growth. It should be fairly under- stood that about a densely shaded door-step, the conditions of vigorous and_ healthful flower-growth can never be maintained. But far worse, and more to be deprecated than a starvation of the flowers in the immedi- ate neighborhood of a country house, is the starvation of the turf; yet in many of the old established village yards, and about many suburban homes where the fancy for dense overhanging shade has had full sway, even the grasses maintain a doubtful livelihood, and their place is taken by the wild mosses. It may be laid down, I think, as a safe rule, and of universal application in our Northern latitudes, that wherever shade immediately contiguous to the house is too dense for the vigorous growth of the ordinary lawn grasses, it is too dense for proper conditions of health; and I would recommend to the invalid tenants of such a house—in place of nostrums—the axe. Of course we can hardly venture to expose our whole frontage to the sun, in the generous way in which the British country liver is wont to do; but sunshine on the roof should, I think, be religiously guarded, whatever may become of our old favorites, the trees. 141 OUT-OF-TOWN PLACES There is another condition of English country life—aside from the climate—which admits of a freer play of sunshine than we may be disposed to admit; it lies in the fact that British houses, whether of brick or stone, are thick-walled (covered, many times, with lichens, if not ivy), and so ward off very ef- fectually the fiercest blasts of July. The thatched roofs of Devon and of Somerset are an even greater protection from the sun. ENGLISH AND AMERICAN HEDGING ANOTHER striking subject of contrast between British and American country road-side, is offered by the numberless array of live hedges which belong to the former, and which probably for generations to come will be wanting in America. In the best-cultivated districts of England, however, hedges are rapidly losing favor for the partition of arable lands, as en- grossing too much space, stealing somewhat from the productive capacity of the soil, and offering shelter for noxious weeds. The sys- tem of soiling is moreover doing away with the necessity for them, and such ground-feeding as is permitted, is more closely and economically 142 WAY-SIDE HINTS controlled by the adoption of movable hurdles. The clearing up of those old lines of hawthorn may give delight to the agricultural eye, but the lover of the picturesque will lament their destruction. The cumbrous hedge-rows, too, of Devon and of the Channel Isles (huge dykes of earth with hedge and trees springing from their top) are yielding to the demands of new and progressive culture. I recall many a loi- tering of a summer’s day between these huge banks of green, within sound of the Dart, or of the Exe, or of the beat of the water in La Fret—the primroses dotting the close sward, the hedges shutting out the light, the scattered boles wound round with cloaks of ivy, the scant, scraggy limbs interlacing above, and a constant moisture upon the macadamized way, giving life to little truant mats of mosses. But near to the centres of travel and improvement, all these delightful old ridgy banks of moss, and earth, and hedges, and trees, have disap- peared. The keen tenants, with the permission of the landlords, are hurting them down in the retired districts. And no wonder ; they occupied full twenty feet in width; every rod of them shaded a good perch of grain land; they offered capital breeding places for scores of rabbits. But though a great change is going on in this 143 OUT-OF-TOWN PLACES respect, as well as in the removal of many of the hedges which mark the interior divisions of the farms, the border lines, and the way-side still show, every succeeding spring, that won- drous wealth of white hawthorn bloom which is so associated in the thoughts of all with English rural landscape. Not always trim, it is true, are the hawthorn hedges; not without an occasional interlacing of rampant brambles ; not without some stray sapling of other growth cropping out, and lording it over the line of hedge; but gnarled, stiff, strong, waving with the undulations of the hills, twining with the curves of the road-way—unbroken, save by here and there a stile or a cumbrous farm- gate—with a fine spray of interlacing branch- lets from ground to top—white, and noisy with bees in all the season of bloom—green, and wavy, and flowing in the flush of the summer’s growth—carrying their red haws through all the early winter, and when the light snows (as they do, rare times) veil the ground, showing their creeping lines of brown up the hills, and athwart the hills, and in soldierly array flank- ing every country by-road. When I think of those long billows of green skirting the paths, and look upon my prosaic posts and rails, it seems to me plain enough 144 PO Aas Pg Pe ee ee ee ane oye STM RSs sO WAY-SIDE HINTS that a great bit of the warp upon which have been woven so many of the charming rural pictures in British art and song, is forever wanting to us here. Fancy a trim line of posts running across the clayey ground of one of Gainsborough’s landscapes! Fancy old Walton sitting under the “rails” for a little chit-chat with his blooming milk-maid! Fancy Milton planting his Russet lawns and fallows gray, Where the nibbling flocks do stray, under the lee of a well-mortised rail-fence! Yet, poetry apart, we shall probably keep by our timber fences for many generations to come in America; first, because, in most parts of the country, it is good economy to do so; and next, because we have as yet no hedge- plant which can thoroughly make good the place of the hawthorn in England We are able to grow the hawthorn indeed; but it must be done daintily. It will never bear the rough usage which its ordinary use as a hedge-plant for farm purposes involves. The same is true to an equal extent of the buckthorn, which, in addition, has the bad habit of dying in many of our hard winters; and both these 145 OUT-OF-TOWN PLACES thorns are liable to the attacks of insects (far more pestiferous with us, it would seem, than in Europe), which seriously abridge their use. The white-willow, so trumpeted by bagmen throughout the country is thoroughly a hum- bug. It is indeed sadly derogatory to the good sense of our rural population that pretenders could ever foist a claim in favor of a willow, of any known habit of growth, upon their ac- ceptance. The osage orange in certain por- tions of the West, and of the Southwest, promises to be very effective. It starts late in the spring, but holds its foliage until the frost withers it. In the extreme North, and in the Northeast, its shoots are liable to be winter-killed, and its own rampant growth is also against it, as an economic plant for hedg- ing. For effective treatment it requires two or three clippings in the year. This is more, we fancy, than the holders of Western prairie farms will be willing to bestow. After ma- ture years it may possibly show a more trac- table disposition in this respect. The honey- locust has been adopted in many quarters, and has its sturdy advocates. But it is open to the same objection of a too luxuriant growth on congenial soils, and of the still more odious objection of a disposition to “sucker,” or send 146 og ae WAY-SIDE HINTS up shoots from the roots at a long remove from the parent stem. The barberry (Berberis vulgaris) is strongly commended by many, but it has never yet had, so far as I ars aware, fair field trial. A strong objection to it appears to me to lie in the fact that, like the willow, it never inclines to branch from near the roots. It sends up indeed a great number of shoots; but shoots of this kind, growing parallel, and showing few leaflets, or little side-spray, can never make a compact, or even a graceful hedge. The old-fashioned farmers of the East have still another ob- jection, as firmly cherished as any dogma they listen to on Sunday, to wit,—the barberry “blasts the rye.” This faith is indeed so firmly and persistently cherished that I have been disposed to look for the source of it in some tribe of aphides peculiar to the bar- berry, which by juxtaposition may transfer its labors to the cereal. The native white-thorn remains—and it has always seemed to me that with proper nursing, education, and development, much might be made of this as a hedge-plant. The horn- beam, also, of our forests, is a small tree, of profuse spray, bearing the shears admirably; but, so far as I know, never as yet adopted on 147 OUT-OF-TOWN PLACES a large scale for hedges. The green walks of the gardens of Versailles demonstrate amply what its European congener will suffer in way of clipping. In the way of evergreen hedge-plants we have nothing to ask for from the nurserymen of Great Britain. Both the arbor-vite and the hemlock spruce are admirably adapted to the purpose. The beauty of this latter nothing can exceed, particularly in the season of its first growth (early June), when its flossy light green tufts hang over it like a great shower of golden bloom. The arbor-vite is perhaps more manageable, and certainly less impatient of removal; but it can never become so effective. The Norway spruce is also admirably adapted to hedge uses, and will bear (if treated early) the closest clipping of the shears. The grand error in its employment hitherto has been in allowing it to gain some three or four feet in height before resorting to the clipping pro- cess. In fact, the general failure of our hedge ex- periments throughout the country—whether for service or ornamentation—may be summed up in one word, a lack of care. Farmers have bought hedge-plants by the thousand, and plowing a single furrow or two along the lines 148 SP ee ee, WAY-SIDE HINTS of their fields, have set them down under the absurdly ill-founded opinion, that thencefor- ward they would take care of themselves. But the young and tender hedge-plant, like the young growth of corn needs culture. And the man who is too indolent or too short-sighted to bestow it, will surely never reap any con- siderable reward. It is amazing—the short- sightedness which prevails in this regard, not only with respect to hedging, but orcharding, and tree-planting of all kinds. I count it as necessary to the vigorous establishment of a newly-set tree or shrub, that all foreign growth should be kept away from an inclosing circle of from two to four feet radius, as to bestow the like attention upon a hill of corn or of melons. ‘The little fibrous rootlets, such as give nursing to the transplanted stock, are as impatient of any robbery of those sources of sustenance, which find their way through the ground, as the annual plants. We should have heard far less lament in this country over the failure of hedges if there had been more con- siderate treatment of them during the early years of their establishment. If this careful nurture be requisite in re- spect to stock from nurseries it is ten-fold more important with respect to young plants 149 OUT-OF-TOWN PLACES transferred directly from the forest. Scores of failures I have known on the part of those, who—being delighted with the appearance of some lusty screen of hemlocks—have under- taken to rival it by direct transfer of the wild growth to some lean streak of plowed land, and have thereafter left the shivering field- pensioners to struggle for themselves. The half would very likely or very properly die; the rest maintain only a meagre semblance of life,and show none of that rampant vigor which is essential to the beauty of a hedge. Indeed, except in fully kept garden ground, I would advise no one to make this direct transfer. A season or two in the nursery rows develops an enormous stock of rootlets, and thereafter, with ordinary care, every plant may be counted on. I doubt very greatly the serviceableness of any of the evergreen hedges for farm pur- poses; both the hemlock and Norway spruce, for full development, demand considerable width, more than would be consistent with farm-economy, and much greater than would be ordinarily accorded to the hawthorn; be- sides which, they are by no means proof against the mischievous forays of cattle, who love nothing better than to tangle their horns 150 WAY-SIDE HINTS in a wall of soft green and twist away the branchlets. The thorn-bearing shrubs are by no means so inviting to their ventures of this sort. I have not spoken of the holly—of which many charming hedges are to be found on English estates—because the British plant has not proved itself wholly equal to our climate, and the American holly (besides being some- what inferior in glossiness and density of foliage) has not yet been commonly introduced even among nurserymen. In the way, how- ever, of leafy screens for garden parterres and terraces, I have great hopes of what may yet be accomplished with our Rhododendron and Kalmia latifolia. The lank, lean habit of this latter under its ordinary transplanting is no measure of its capacity for making a full, rounded, dense wall of green. Whoever has wandered over high-lying pasture-lands of New England which have recently been cleared of their forest growth, and has seen the wanton, luxuriant, crowded tufts of Kalmia shooting from the old roots, can form some measure of the capacity of the shrub for good screen effects. The lank growth, too, of the Rhododendron in a few shaded swamp-lands where it finds its habitat in New England, is no indication of ISI OUT-OF-TOWN PLACES what may be done with it under fairer condi- tions of growth. And this mention of the laurel family (i like that old popular naming of these shrubs) reminds me of the screens and coppices which greet the eye so often in English gardens and in English landscape. It is quite possible that with our climate, we can never equal their va- riety. The Bay, the Spanish laurel, the Lau- restina, will very likely be fastidious in ad- justing themselves to our winters. But with our narrow-leaved laurel, our Latifolia, our Rhododendrons, we can pile up a wealth of glossy green against the northern sides of our gardens, which even the best British farmers might envy. Add to these our spruces (hem- lock and others), our white pine (Strobus), for background, and we have nothing to covet. But if we have nothing to covet, we have very much to learn in the adjustment of our leafy screens. Over and over I observe some ambitious gentleman (at the hands of his gar- dener) attempting to establish a protective coppice, and after careful and expensive prep- aration of the ground (there is nothing lack- ing on that score), placing his rare evergreens where they will be presently overgrown and lost, or putting out his Rhododendrons where 152 WAY-SIDE HINTS they will have no room for full and rounded development, or crowding his spruces, and his Deodars, and Scotch pines, so that in a few years there is but a thicket of close-growing boles—offering no shelter from the wind, and graded by no forecast of the relative measure of growth. Or if, by accident, the planting be judicious, there follows none of that resolute trimming and bold use of the axe, under which only a protective group of trees can be made to maintain its rounded symmetry and its artis- tic agreement with the landscape. Indeed, we are as yet only beginning to learn what the real worth of screening banks of foliage are to fruit, to gardens, and even to grain-fields. It is doubtful if it be not the last lesson—but certainly not the least im- portant—which is learned in ornamental or economic arboriculture. VILLAGE GREENS Ir I enter a little quiet plea for the old- fashioned Village Greens, I hope I shall not be decried by the reformers. Village Greens are not quotable at the “Board.” Our friend 153 OUT-OF-TOWN PLACES of the Avenue cannot dash through them with his equipage. There are no patches of choice exotics upon the village green—possibly not even a serpentine path; no fountain, I am sure, that shows the spasmodic gush of the city fountains. And yet the name—Village Green, is, somehow, tenderly cherished; it ral- lies to my thought a great cycle of rural mem- ories belonging to song, to childhood, to story and to travel—wherein I see, in bountiful pro- cession, broad-armed elms, dancing peasants, flocks of snowy geese, shadows of church spires, boys with satchels, bonfires of fallen leaves, militia “trainings,” and some irate Betsey Trotwood, making a soldierly dash at intruding donkeys. It is quite possible that these ill-assorted memories may confound pub- lic and private Greens, as well as English and American, but all have their spring in that good old name of the Village Green. I hope that it is not a strange name, and that it will never grow strange while grass is green, and villages are founded. In old days of stage-coach travel, one came, after a tedious, lumbering drag over hills, and through swampy flats, (where, if season favored, wild grape-vines, or white azaleas, tossed their rich fragrance into coach win- 154 U2ZIIB SBIPIA plo UY WAY-SIDE HINTS dows,) upon some lifted plateau of land, where the white houses shone among trees, flanking a level bit of greensward, and geese grazed the common; and where was a whip- ping-post, may be—possibly a decaying pair of oaken stocks, and a court-house with its belfry. I do not think such old village com- mons of New England, (and I suspect they were rarely to be seen in other parts of the country,) were ever very nicely kept. The geese cropped the grass short, to be sure; but a goose is not a tidy animal; the pool, too—if any pondlet of water broke the surface of the level—was apt to show the stamp of adventur- ous hoofs and a muddy margin; for all this, however, such eyelets of green space in the center of country towns, around which and upon which all the gayety and cheer of the settlement might disport itself, were very charming. I do not know but I would re- joice to see the village stocks brought into use again, for the sake of the broad common where they stood: certain it is, that if they were ever serviceable (I speak of the stocks), they would be serviceable now. I think I could mention sundry individuals—not all of them editors— who would look well—sitting in the stocks. And as for the whipping-posts, who would not 155 OUT-OF-TOWN PLACES rejoice to see their revival, provided only he could name the martyrs? But I have no right to speak of the Vil- lage Green as wholly a thing of the past, al- though such symbols of order and discipline as the stocks and the whipping-post have gone by. Travellers rarely meet with them, it is true; but we do not travel by stage-coach nowadays. We do not face the old orderly frontage of quiet, outlying towns, as we did when we clattered down the main street to the common and the tavern and the pump. If we travel thitherward, we are thrust into the back- sides of towns upon some raw cut of a rail- way, amid all manner of debris and noisome smells. Now I suppose that old-time villagers took a pride in their common, with its stately trees—in their court-house, their breadth and neatness of high-road, as being the objects which must of necessity fasten the regard of those from the outside world who paid their town a visit. The two deacons who lived opposite, would never decorate their door- yards or walks, for the entertainment of each other, but rather for the admiration of the public, which must needs pass their doors. But yet—and it is a curious fact in the history 156 ew ne Ee ON ee ee se 7 WAY-SIDE HINTS of public taste—in these times, when old vil- lages are disembowelled by the railway, and all their showiness turned inside out, there seems very little regard paid to the observation of that larger public which is hurtling by every day in the cars. The former traveller along the high-road, was cautiously placated with orderly palings, neat door-yards, an array of grass and flower- ing shrubs, with a church in imposing posi- tion; but the larger public that now visits the locality is greeted with a terrific array of backsides, of lumbering stys, disorderly fences, and no token that the village world is cognizant of their presence, or careful of their judgment. Of course, the habit of villagers’ life cannot be changed so quickly as a railway cutting is made—the new world of progress may be upon them before they are aware; but when actually present, why not meet it with something of the old tidiness and pride? Can any rural philosopher explain us this matter? Does the whirl of the world into sudden sight of all our disorderly domestic- ity, break up self-respect, and weaken faith in appearances ? Here, and there indeed, I observe one who newly paints his rear door, and trims his 157 OUT-OF-TOWN PLACES hedges, and plants his arbors, and gravels his walks, so as to impress favorably the new passers-by of the rail; but for one who shows this solicitude respecting the new public, a dozen keep to a stolid indifference, and living with their faces the other way, leave the pigs and a mangy dog to squeal and bark a recep- tion to the world of the railway. I cannot quite explain this. Most of us love to carry a name for respectability and good order and decency, and do not like to be dis- covered kicking the cat or indulging in any similar personal gratifications or wants. It is true we do not know one in a thousand of the ten thousand who hurtle past our home- stead; but how many of those who make up the body of that public opinion, in the eye of which we wish to live with decency and order, do we know? What all this may have to do with the topic of Village Greens, may be not quite clear to the reader, but I will try and develop its bear- ings. All the lesser towns through which or near to which a railway passes, have virtually changed face; they confront the outside world no longer upon their embowered street or quiet common, but at the “station.” There lies the point of contact, and there it must re- 158 eee er ee. WAY-SIDE HINTS main until the mechanicians shall have devised some airy carriage which shall drop visitants from the clouds upon the threshold of the cosey old hostelrie. There being thus, as it were, a new focal point of the town life, it wants its special illustration and adornment. The village cannot ignore the railway: it is the common carrier; it is the bond of the town with civilization; it lays its iron fingers upon ‘the lap of a hundred quiet valleys, and steals away their tranquillity like a ravisher. What then? Every village station wants its little outlying Green to give character and dignity to the new approach. Is there any good reason against this? Nay, are there not a thousand reasons in its favor? In nine out of ten wayside towns, such space could be easily secured, easily held in reserve, easily made at- tractive; and if there were no room for a broad expanse of sward, at least there might be planted some attractive copse of evergreens or shrubbery, to declare by graceful type the rural pride of the place. He would be counted a sorry curmudgeon who should allow all visitors to make their way to his entrance- hall, through wastes of dust and piles of offal ; cannot the corporate authorities of a town be taught some measure of self-respect, and wel- 159 OUT-OF-TOWN PLACES come the outside world with indications of or- derly thrift, blooming and carrying greeting to the very threshold of the place? First impressions count for a great deal— whether in our meeting with a woman, or with a village. Slipshoddiness is a bad economy in towns, as in people. Every season there is a whirl of citizens, tired of city heats and costs, traversing the country in half hope of being wooed to some summer home, where the trees and the order invite tranquillity and promise enjoyment. A captivating air about a village station will count for very much in the de- cision. There will be growth, to be sure, in favored localities, in spite of disorder. I could name a score of little towns along the line of the New Jersey and Erie and Hudson Rail- ways, with their charming suburban retreats near by, to which the occupant must wade his way through all manner of filthiness and dis- orderly debris, making his landing, as it were, in the very dust-heap of the place, and smack- ing with a relish, it would seem, these prefa- tory incidents of his country home. Is there no mending this? Will town or borough officials always remain insensible to the good influences of an inviting and de- corous approach to the territory which is sub- 160 WAY-SIDE HINTS ject to their keeping? Dram-shops, and oys- ter-shops, and slatternly land-offices, will doubtless, under our present civilization, have position somewhere; but must they needs be foisted upon the area about the village station; Must we always confront a town with its worst side foremost? Suppose for a mo- ment that the old Village Green were trans- lated to the neighborhood of the station, or a companion spot of rural attractiveness estab- lished there, around which the waiting equi- pages might circle in attendance—suppose a pleasant shade of elms spreading itself upon that now dusty area—suppose the corporate authorities keenly alive to the aspect which their town and its approaches may wear in the eye of the world which looks on, and forms its judgment every day by thousands—sup- pose an inviting inn, duly licensed, swings its sign under some near bower of trees, will all this count nothing toward the growth, the reputation, the dignity of a country locality? I know I am writing in advance of the current practice in these respects; but I am equally sure that I am not writing in advance of the current practice fifty years hence, if only the schools are kept open. The reputation of a town for order, for neatness, for liberality, or 161 OUT-OF-TOWN PLACES taste, is even now worth something, and it is coming to be worth more, year by year. RAILWAY GARDENING I HAVE alluded to the railway station and its surroundings, because it seems to me that—in the lessons of public taste which are being read from time to time by those competent to teach on such topics—this new junction of the world with country localities is being sadly over- looked. Where indeed can there be a hope- ful opening for any esthetic teaching, if this inoculation and grafting-point of the business -world with the world ruminant and rural, is allowed to fix, with all its ugly swell of swath- ing bandages and pitch and mud, uncared for? The question of proprietorship might give some difficulty, but it is one whose difficulties would vanish, if only the corporate authorities of town and road could be brought to act in harmony. Nor is there any reason in the econ- omies of the matter why they should not. The road secures a limited area for the establish- ment of its station, and some outlying grounds, in most cases, to guard against future contin- gencies—which grounds usually rest in a most 162 ee a ee Ce Te ee eT ee ee Re ee a a a in WAY-SIDE HINTS forlorn condition, giving refuge, may be, to condemned sleepers, or wreck of wheels—pos- sibly tenanted by some burly night porter, who thrusts his stove-pipe through the roof of a dismantled car—showing just that disarray, in short, which declares no pride or proof of ownership. If there chance to be any half- filled pits upon the premises, enterprising Celtic citizens of the neighborhood count them good spots into which to shoot their garbage. All this the town authorities regard as a matter which concerns only the distinguished cor- poration of the road. Thus, between them, the most unkempt and noisome wilderness about the half of such of our country towns as are pierced by railways is apt to lie in the purlieus of the station. Yet railway directors are, some of them, professing Christians, and so are town authorities—at times. What now if these good people (hec verbi magnificen- tia!) would lay their heads together to compass what might prove a gain to the town thrift, and so indirectly to the road, without positive loss to either? What if the town were to ex- tend the area of the corporation lands at its own cost, so far as to establish a little bowling green, that should give piquant welcome to every stranger, and grow to be an object of 163 OUT-OF-TOWN PLACES town pride? What if care of all grounds ad- joining the station should be subject to some custodian, bound to control them after some simple prescribed rules of order, whose ful- filment would work an economy to the com- pany, and add a grace to that portion of the village? I cannot help recalling to mind here some of those charming way-side stations upon the Continent—in France, Germany, and Switzer- land—where the station-master is also manager of a blooming garden (the property of the com- pany ), which he manages with such tender care that the blush of the roses and the muffled scent of the heliotropes come to me again as I read the name of the station upon the Guide Book. And yet those French, those German, those Swiss corporators, who encourage their station-masters to such handicraft, are shrewd money men. They find their account in all this; they like to make their roads attractive; the way-side villagers encourage them in it to the full bent of their capacity. In one quarter (among those stations of which I speak, but I cannot now just say where) I was provoked into special inquiries : “This nice treatment involved a great bill of expense doubtless ?” 164 WAY-SIDE HINTS “Very great care—grand labor!” “Tt must make a heavy bill for the company to foot?” “Pardon, monsieur, the work is mine and the gain is mine.” “Not very much, it is to be feared.” “Pardon” again; the station-master (it was only an out of the way country station) has sold enough of bouquets to passing travellers to establish his boy at a pension: he hopes everything for his boy. The story gave a new fragrance to the roses, and to the Marguerites which he handed me. Now, I am afraid our station-masters, whether in Massachusetts or along the Hud- son, will not be capable of making themselves good florists at a bound; but yet the hint has its value. What objection can there pos- sibly be to the careful culture of such strips of land as come within the jurisdiction of every station-master upon our iron roads? In not infrequent instances he has the lea of some deep cutting for shelter; he has the eyes of an observing crowd (who are debarred from pil- fering) for an incentive; he may have his thousand customers for floral offerings every summer’s day. Could not the townsfolk aid, with prudent foresight, in any such diversion 165 OUT-OF-TOWN PLACES of the waste strips of railway lands? The area in gross is not small; miles upon miles of bank cutting, of marsh land, of embankment, of green level, each one of which will grow its own crop after methods which a wealthy and intelligent railway corporation might surely direct. Osiers upon the low lands, shrubs upon the raw cuttings (binding them against wash), grasses upon the verdant lands, a flame of flowers around every sta- tion. Does anybody doubt that this thing is to be in the years to come? Does anybody doubt (who believes in progress) that some day the directors, now so stolid and in- different, will make a merit of it, and take a pride in pointing out their horticultural suc- cesses upon their league-long strips of gar- den? One very great advantage in that nice cul- ture which is to be observed about many of the British and Continental railway stations lies in the fact, that the culture and its success are submitted every day to thousands of eyes. What you or I may do-very successfully, and in obedience to the best laws of taste and veg- etable physiology on some back country prop- erty, may really benefit the public very little, for the reason that the public will never put eye 166 WAY-SIDE HINTS : upon it; but what our horticultural friend at a railway station may do (if done well) is of vastly more profit. It is in the way of being seen; it is in the way of being seen of those who are not immediately engrossed with other care than the easy care of travel; it gives sug- gestions to them in their most accessible moods. To this day I think I have fixed in my mind many a little gracefully arranged parterre of bloom, only petunias and pansies and four o’clocks, may be, which I saw only a few mo- ments on some day, now far gone, in other latitudes, and of which the scant memorial is but some jotting down upon a foreign note- book, followed by a scant pencilling of the ac- tual adjustment, so far as the brief stay al- lowed of transcript. The chemists tell us that the air of cities and their neighborhood is richer in available nitro- gen (in shape of ammonia or nitric acid) than the air of the country, by reason of the out- pourings from so many chimney-tops, and the attendant processes of combustion. May not the cinders and the fine ash and the gases evolved from a great highway of engines al- ways puffing and smoking in the lower strata of the atmosphere contribute somewhat, and that not inconsiderably, to the plants found 167 OUT-OF-TOWN PLACES along the lines of such highway? I am not aware that experiment has as yet determined anything on this score; and whatever such de- termination might be, it is certain that abund- ant sources of fertilization might be secured at every country station, sufficient amply to equip an investing garden. Upon the oldest roads very much could be done still in way of this charming investiture, and in way of the adjoining bowling-green, under encourage- ment of the town, or of neighboring property- holders; and upon all new lines of railway, wherever new stations are established, every- thing could be done. To make a township at- tractive, the approach to it must be attractive. Will not our Western burghers who are inter- ested in the growth of townships make a note of this fact, and do somewhat for the benefit of the coming generation as well as for their own advantage, by so ordering the establish- ment of railway stations as to determine and insure the attractive features I have named? LANDSCAPE TREATMENT OF RAILWAYS Waite upon this subject of railway gardens and culture, I have a word to say to all who 168 WAY-SIDE HINTS have lands adjoining upon these iron clamps of our present civilization. A great accession of responsibility comes to them by reason of their position. A slatternly wall, a disgrace- ful method of tillage, a reeking level of un- drained land, in far away districts, may cor- rupt but few young farmers and confirm them in bad practices, by reason of their isolation. But upon a great highway of travel, where a thousand eyes measure the shortcomings day by day, a good or a bad example will have a hundred-fold force. It would seem, indeed, as if a shrewd busi- ness economy would commend care and nicety of tillage. The adventurous hair-dressers and fabricators of a myriad nostrums, paint their advertisements on the rocks; what better ad- vertisement of a farm or garden, or nursery or wood or meadow, than such equipment of them all with the best results of thorough care and culture, as to fasten the eye and pique in- vestigation? I know a suburban architect who, by the harmonies and order of a home- stead, in full view of a thousand travellers a day, has doubled his business. So the grace of a parterre or the artistic arrangement of a terrace or a walk in the eye of so many, may make the reputation of a gardener. Every 169 OUT-OF-TOWN PLACES dweller, indeed, upon a line of railway, has a reputation to make or lose in all that relates to his treatment of ground, whether as woodland, farm, or garden. If the homestead be so near the clatter of the trains as to give too great exposure of the domestic offices, good taste, as well as the quiet which most country-livers enjoy, will suggest a planting out of the line of traffic by thickets of evergreens; and these, by their care- ful adjustment, and occasional openings for a glimpse at the more attractive features of the situation, will themselves give such a place a character. If, however, the house be so re- mote as to admit of all desired seclusion about the dooryard and to yield only distant views of the trail of carriages whirling up their white curls of steam, a mere hedge may mark the dividing-line, or some simple paling; and the lands between, whether in lawn or tillage, may be so ordered as to greet the eye of every intel- ligent traveller, or impress upon him such rural lessons as every adjoining proprietor should make it a virtue to teach. When a farm or country-seat is traversed by a deep cutting for the railway bed—so deep as to forbid any extended side views—a taste- ful proprietor may still mark his lands notice- 170 le Se ee ee ae eT eee Sa ee ee a oe) ae ee ee ee eS WAY-SIDE HINTS ably, and well, by arranging—in concert with the railway officials—an easily graded slope upon either side of the cutting, which, by a few simple dressings, shall be brought into a grassy surface—telling a good story for the flats above, and showing upon their extreme height a skirting hedge-row or coppice, or pos- sibly the trellis of some rustic paling, bloom- ing with flowers, and (if convenience of path- way require it) stretching upon either side of a bridgelet across the chasm of the road. Even where such cutting is through cliff, noth- ing is to forbid the dressing of the higher ledges with a few crimson bunches of colum- bines, to nod their heads between the eye of the traveller and the sky, and make good re- port, from their little corners, of the people whose every-day walk skirts the cliffs. Ifa gradual slope, or terraces, are admissible by the nature of the cutting, it is a question if these may not be made to carry their parterres of flowers, or of blooming shrubs, to give charm to the borders of an estate. I have somewhere seen such slope, whereon an ad- venturous nurseryman had given advertise- ment of his name and calling by an ingenious arrangement of his box-borders in gigantic lettering—not, perhaps, a very legitimate rural 171 OUT-OF-TOWN PLACES decoration, or such as a severe taste would commend—and yet I cannot but think that a lit- tle trail of fiery flowers, scattered, as it were, upon a bank of lawn, and spelling out some graceful name (ofthehomestead ) , which should be discernible only one swift moment as the train flashed by, while to one looking forward or backward, it should be only a careless ribbon of flowers flecking the green—I say I can hardly fancy that this would smack of tawdri- ness. However this may be, devices there are, innumerable, for conferring grace upon such sudden slopes as I have hinted at: a slope to the north will carry admirably its tufts of rhododendron and of kalmia, or its confused tangle of hemlocks and Lawson Cypress. The English ivy, too, will grow admirably in such situations, upon a ground surface, tak- ing root here and there, and covering all the lesser inequalities. with its glossy network of leaves. Such condition of growth, moreover, (trailing over the surface of the ground,) in- sures protection by snows; or, if that be want- ing, a thin coating of litter spread over the creeper will be an ample defence. The ivy is winter-killed, not so much by extreme cold, as by sudden alternations of temperature, and ex- posure of its stiffened leaves to the scalding 172 WAY-SIDE HINTS sunbeams which sometimes belong even to a northern winter. Protection from the January sun is, I believe, as important as protection from extreme cold. Where the railway passes through a country property upon the same general level with a lawn surface or farm lands, the rules for ad- justment—of crops or of decorative features— so as to carry their best landscape effects, will be comparatively easy. All right lines— whether of annual crops, hedge-rows, or ave- nues—will, of a surety, lose effect by being es- tablished parallel to the line of road. At what angle they should touch upon it, will be best determined by the nature of the surface, and by the conditions of the background. I know that it is the habit of many who con- trol large estates adjoining railways, to ig- nore, so far as possible, this iron neighbor, and to make all their plans of improvement with a contemptuous disregard of the travelling ob- servers, who count by thousands, considering only the few who look on from the old high- road, or those, still fewer, who have the privi- lege of the grounds. But in a republican country, this is monstrous; monstrous, indeed, in any country where a man properly reckons his responsibilities to his fellows. If he has 173 OUT-OF-TOWN PLACES conceived new lessons of taste, it is his duty so to illustrate them as to make them command the acceptance of the multitude. He has no right to ignore the onlook of the world, and be careless if the world condemns or approves. A high railway embankment traversing the low lands of a country estate, if at a good re- move from the homestead, is not so awkward a matter to deal with as might at first be sup- posed. N = Dy, : O, = Y LZ ewe” “ys PASTURE GARDENERS COTTAGE y Ml a «A te \\ ; Wy WSs ; a ne Y) See) OUT-OF-TOWN PLACES be established, while the west lands are under tillage, by means of a hurdle fence, which shall extend the lane along the west border of the garden. The fields marked M and R are, as ex- pressed upon the diagram, either in tillage or in meadow; and the multitude of fences has been done away with. The southernmost of these two fields is laid bare for thorough tillage of any character, and its neighbor to the north has only a protecting belt of wood. The enclosure K, having a ledge and an old - group of forest trees in its northwestern angle (offering admirable shelter), may have its picturesquely disposed orcharding, or may be planted with ornamental trees, as the proprietor may fancy. In either case, with a few pro- tective hurdles, it may be cropped by a score of Southdowns; but it must be fairly under- stood that no orcharding will do its best or even its second best, except it be kept under thorough cultivation, and no grass permitted within reach of its most divergent rootlets. The walks and entrance drive explain them- selves. The dotted line H J, indicates a view of a distant village spire, which upon the first diagram, as will be seen, was entirely cut off by two or three intruding trees; and even 308 MR. URBAN AND A COUNTRY HOUSE when these were removed, the view was sadly interfered with by the mossy wall already spoken of. To obviate this difficulty I sug- gested a gap in the wall thereabout, and the establishment of a broad rustic gate under whose rude arch the distant spire would come into sight as through a frame-work. A rough sketch will give a hint of the vista. ' No pencilling, however, will represent that soft suffusion of smoky color which enwraps the little spire and house-roofs, as they come to the eye through the gap in the sharp dark green of the foreground. The view to the northeast (in the direction of the dotted line J), at the time of taking possession, looked over a foul marsh lying upon the opposite side of the high-road; this marsh received the drainage of all the elevated 399 OUT-OF-TOWN PLACES — ground to the north and west, and its excess of water leaked away by an indecisive and in- termittent flow through the pasture land marked P. Under the old regime—as will be seen by recurrence to the drawing of the farm at time of purchase—this pasture served as “meadow,” and produced its annual quota of bog hay. Beyond the marsh and the high- lands which skirted it to the northeast, was an extremely pretty view of a range of low moun- tains, some two miles distant, in the lee of which were to be seen a spire and one or two tall chimneys. But the unkempt, slatternly marsh-land in the foreground ruined the scene. It might be planted out indeed; but an effec- tive planting out would interfere somewhat with some of the most picturesque objects in the distance. I advised a slight excavation of a portion of the marsh so as to show a little lakelet, over whose farther arm a rustic bridge might be thrown—the bridge serving as a portion of the barrier between the area of plaisance ground around the pond and the pas- ture beyond. By this device and adroit dis- position of shrubbery, the whole area south of the high-road would appear from the win- dows of the mansion to constitute but one en- closure, within which the pet Alderneys might 310 ae MR. URBAN AND A COUNTRY HOUSE be seen cropping the herbage, or cooling them- selves in the pool beyond the bridge. Of course such disposition of the matter (which I have tried to illustrate in the draw- ing) commended itself most warmly to Mrs. Urban and to the Misses Urbans. Nor did the pater familias greatly object. To add still more to the picturesqueness of this view across the road, I proposed the intro- duction of the gardener’s cottage upon the wayside, in such manner that its quaint gable should peep from the trees upon the right of the scene, and a well-trimmed hedge of hem- lock shut out all sight of the road-way. The diagram already given will show the position of the water, the walks, the gardener’s cottage, and the gardener’s patch of vegetables—this latter being quite out of sight from the high grounds by the mansion. 311 OUT-OF-TOWN PLACES It is quite essential to the effectiveness of this design for the lay-out of the grounds that the public road be kept in neat and trim con- dition—so neat and so trim that the visitor ap- proaching it from the south (the direction of the nearest railway station), shall, when he arrives opposite the gardener’s cottage (whose porch must jut upon the highway), involun- tarily reckon it a gate-lodge of some private domain into which he just there enters. For the fuller establishment of this pleasant de- ceit, the real entrance gates should be of the simplest and most unpretending character— as if they were but portions of some interior enclosures. Whatever grass or shrubs may grow within the public road after passing the gardener’s cottage should be as zealously cared for and as trimly kept as if they were within the enclosing wall. One may be assured that the neighboring public will never resent such careful keeping of the high-road, and they may be brought by it, in time to practise some such picturesque devices on their own account. Another hint I think it necessary to drop here. The lay-out of a place upon paper it is easy to make very engaging and tasteful ; there is indeed no limit to the graces of curve, which may be laid down by an adroit drafts- 312 MR. URBAN AND A COUNTRY HOUSE man upon a fair sheet of Bristol board. But it is a very different matter to establish the same graces upon the land itself. Unlimited expenditure may indeed make any surface con- form itself to the curvatures and devices of a drawing. But the art of arts in landscape gardening is to make outlay illustrate the beau- ties of the land, and not to cramp and deplete the land to illustrate the charms of the draw- ing. Particular curves or undulations of surface, which may have a most attractive look in a finished landscape, may lack very many of the essentials of grace if transferred to paper, after the ordinary manner of topographical drawing. If we looked at landscape effects always from a balloon—if the hills were all fore-shortened, and the curves of walks or drives all determinable at a glance, a ground map would be a very fair guide by which to determine artistic effects. But the truth is that in nature the hills have their perspective; the scattered trees or coppices are not mere woolly blotches, but slant their shadows upon the surface and toss their tops into the sky- line; curves are not cognizable in their length, or ease, or abruptnesses at a glance—we steal upon them by degrees; they please by their 313 OUT-OF-TOWN PLACES easy cheatery—by their unexpected sequence— by such abrupt diversions, even, as have pal- pable cause in inequality of surface or ob- truding rock or cliff. It is quite possible, in- deed—nay, it is altogether probable that the curves and devices which are most charmingly effective in the work itself, may have a stiffness and an impertinence upon the map which will thoroughly disappoint. As cases in point, I remember once looking down with exceeding interest from the height of some Italian town (I think in Bologna) upon what seemed a charming garden; its curves were full of grace; its little coppices were admirably adjusted; its flow of walks as happy as a dream; but when I found my way to it afterward, by a bribe to its custodian, and met it upon tame level—the bird’s-eye view being gone—it seemed the baldest of dreary pattern-work in turf—with no significance in its curves, and no keeping in its lines. Again, there was a day when I went wander- ing in sun and shadow through the masses of a Scotch garden, not far from Hawthornden, with cliff and brook and water and bridge and tangles of wildwood—all so caught by the landscape designer and so strung along the foot-ways he had planted, that delight was 314 MR. URBAN AND A COUNTRY HOUSE unceasing; and when I asked for a sketch of its meandering oyer that broken surface, it presented such an array of tame lines, and meaningless curvatures and violent crooks as to express nothing of the grace which on the grounds themselves flowed over, and made constant enchantment. A SUNNY HOUSE WE will suppose that Mr. Urban is thoroughly satisfied with his garden and grounds—that he finds his newly planted trees growing apace —that his Southdowns are all that an ac- complished grazier could desire; but the old house becomes at last a weariness. Not be- cause it is old; nor yet because it is compara- tively small—so small that he has to billet, from time to time, a bachelor visitor in a little loft of his tool-house; but it has no wide and open frontage to the sun. He insists that the new one, of which he projects the building out of the rough material from his cliff, shall have at least a glimpse of southern sunshine in every habitable room below. “T am tired of the gloom of north ex- posures,” he writes; “wood-fires are very well, 315 OUT-OF-TOWN PLACES but the blaze of them is not equal to the blaze of sunshine. Do what you will with the north side, but the parlor must look to the south, and the library (of course) and the dining- room, and—without going up-stairs—there must, if possible, be a billiard-room and a bed- room, looking the same sunny way. In brief, my notion is, to have a house with plenty of room, and no north side to it. Can the prob- lem be solved? “T don’t care for shape, if it be only pictu- resque, and meet the wants I have named above A considerable slope of the land toward the west upon the locality I have chosen, (keeping all the old charming views in leash) will admit of an airy basement at the western end, and full windows (two of them) to the south. This would furnish a good spot for billiards, if you can contrive a respectable stairway down from the hall; and if the billiard-room opens out westwardly into a special conserva- tory, where one can smoke his cigar to kill the red spiders (or green ones, I forget which), all the better. “What on earth you will do with the north side of the house under this ruling of win- dows and wants, I don’t know. I should say a long picture-gallery, if I had pictures. What 316 MR. URBAN AND A COUNTRY HOUSE if it were to be a blank wall with ivies growing over it? But then there ’s the kitchen and laundry, which the mistress insists must have either western or eastern light—if not both. Treat the problem as you will, keeping in mind the coveted exposures—the wish to use up some of my raw material in the shape of rocks, and withal, the desire not to make the affair too burdensomely expensive. “P, S.—Mrs. Urban wishes a boudoir, which must have a south look-out too, and mind—no basement kitchen. “P. S.—Again. Mrs U. says the laundry might be in the basement, but not near the billiard-room, and the dairy must be conveni- ent and cool, and the kitchen must not be too far from the dining-room, and no dumb-wait- ers; and it would be very nice to have a ver- anda for flowers, by the dining-room, and not to forget the sunny bed-room. “She wishes a large hall, and well lighted, and servants’ stairs apart, and hopes you ’ll place the front door in a protected situation; (south side, if possible.) And a good large China closet and butler’s room, very well lighted ; and bath-room convenient, on the first floor.” Fortunately a considerable slope of the land 317 OUT-OF-TOWN PLACES to the west admitted of the establishment of laundry and of larder (adjoining) in the base- ment of the kitchen extension, and also of a roomy billiard-room with south frontage, and opening westward upon the desired conserva- tory. 318 MR. URBAN AND A COUNTRY HOUSE Of the floor immediately above, and upon the ground level as one approaches the place from the east, I gave a rough draft, showing the general disposition of the rooms. By this it will be seen that every considerable apartment, including even the boudoir, has a southern exposure. I give no drawing of any ground-plan, save that of the first floor, and supplement it only by a rude perspective sketch of the building, in which I have endeavored to incorporate some of the hints already given with respect to the use of homely materials and the intermingling of a timber framework with country masonry. One great advantage of this humble style lies in the fact, that it permits of the attachment of many of the rural offices (as, for instance, the ice-house and work-room above, and contiguous dairy) to the main building without offensive contrast. —at the same time contributing to the general effect of the mass of building. Mass counts for a great deal in a country house and in landscape;—most of all irregular mass— which can be compassed (economy considered) only by associating some of the exterior of- fices of a rural home with the home itself. All this, the rough material, and the simple method of combining timber framework with 319 OUT-OF-TOWN PLACES a rude filling-in of masonry, permits and in- vites. Observe that the tall, tower-like building on the right of the view requires no expensive in- terior finish; it covers offices which must be provided in some form. By attachment to the main structure it gives dignity and extent; and if it be covered with graceful, climbing plants, it adds wonderfully to the general effect. The outline and the tints of a country house, as I have already urged, are the great things to be reckoned, when we rate landscape effects. It is quite possible that the finesse and preci- sion of the city architect will tell no story upon a brook side, or on such slope of land as Mr. Urban has chosen for his site. Effective building of a country house wants a picture- maker as much as architect. First, and chief- est of all, every convenience must be supplied— all sunny exposure made available—all juxta- positions reconciled—all home-like qualities guarded. Next, the mass of building must tally with the landscape, and illustrate it with a rich, good color of home. Outline must not be monotonous or heavy, but varied and piquant: roofs must gleam a welcome, porches promise hospitality, and chimney-tops, showing 320 MR. URBAN AND A COUNTRY HOUSE pennants of smoke, lift up standing invita- tions. . See + 6, 0 H Py a ee