ee Hi Olt fo oe Maude We apes a cea Presented to the LIBRARIES of the UNIVERSITY OF TORONTO by Hugh Anson-Cartwright BY THE SAME AUTHOR. MV UEARMUOFEHDCRW OOD ooo cube. 2s ceeeesecseestenee Oe Lvol. $1 75 WETADAYSUAT EDGEWOOD coe sson coeas tess asec c- us tense Lvol. 175 REV ERIES OR Al BACHELOR: ..6-snce5 ste secccasuescsescscaaseeee Lvol. 175 SR DREAM PUT see eee ese tec wioe Siete a ee Lvol. 115 | SEVEN STORIES, WITH BASEMENT AND ATTIC....00c00000000 vol. 175 DRE IOHNG 225 ee et os eae: Ab echand iat Sater h aoe ree .2vola, 3 50 Copies sent by mail, post paid, on receipt of price. ———— SS aman es > UU DLES HINntTs FoR Country PLACEs. BY THE AUTHOR OF “MY FARM OF EDGEWOOD.” NEW YORK; CHARLES SCRIBNER & CO. 1867. “= Entered, according to the Act of Congress, in the year 1867, by CHARLES SCRIBNER & CO., In the Clerk’s Office of the District Court of the United States, for the Southern District of New York. Joun F. Trow & Co., PRINTERS, STEREOTYPERS, AND ELECTROTYPERS, 50 Greene Street, New York. PREEPACE, HIS little book does not treat exhauttively of any of the TL fubjects which are brought to view in its pages ; it is more full of fuggeftion than inftruction. Its aim is to ftim- ulate thofe 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 accomplifhed. I have efpecially fought to excite the ambition of thofe holders of humbler eftates, who believe that nothing can be done in the way of adornment cf country property, except under the eye of accomplifhed gardeners. I have endeavored fteadily to fhow—whatever may have been the divergence of topic—that the proper appliance of fmall means will pro- duce effects whofe charms mutt, in their way, ftand unrivalled, and that there is no neceflary gulf of diftinction in quality of beauty between the beft-ordered large eftate and the ju- dicioufly ordered fuburban home of the mechanic. iv PREFACE. When we learn to achieve and appreciate the beauties that are fimple, we fhall have no difficulty in achieving the beauties that are complex. The book is a tract for homeli- nefs; and I hope it may make country profelytes. EDGEWooD, May, 1867. CON TEN 2S: L—AN OLD-STYLE FARM, . IW—ADVICH FOR LACKLAND. PoMmoLocists AND ComMOoN PEOPLE, e LACKLAND MAKES A BEGINNING, e Lackianpb’s HousE-PLans, é . LACKLAND’s GARDENER, . F) . A Pic anv a Cow, : c e On GATEWAYS, : : 5 e GATEWAYS AND RuRAL CARPENTRY, e VILLAGE AND Country Roap-sipE, e II.— WAY-SIDE HINTS. TALK ABOUT PonrcHEs, e . ° ON NOT DOING ALL AT ONCE, . ° PiovcHIne AND Dritiep Crops, : Roavs AND SHADE, : . e ENGLISH AND AMERICAN HEDGING, : VILLAGE GREENS, . - c . RAILWAY GARDENING, . e e LANDSCAPE TREATMENT OF RAILWAYS, .- PAGE. . 1 » 25 - 39 - 44 - 54 - 62 Be ade) s OL - 88 - 99 - 109 - 117 - 124 « 129 ~ 139 - 47 - 153 vlil IV.—_LAYING OUT OF GROUNDS. CONTENTS. LANDSCAPE GARDENING, Farm LANDSCAPE, LAanpDs NoT FARMED, City AND Town Parks, . PLACE For Parks, EqavuIPpMENT OF PuBLIC GARDENS, Buryine-Growunpbs, V.—MR. URBAN AND A COUNTRY HOUSE. REAL EsTaATE PURCHASE, . Cost AND RETURNS oF Firty AUCREs, QUESTION OF LOCALITIES, TESTIMONY OF EXPERTs, Resutts or Inquiry, Country Hovsrs anp Repatxs, Site AND MATERIAL, Form ANpD CoLor, Mr. URBAN’S PURCHASE, « A Sunny Hovss, CONCLUSION, PAGE. - 163 168 - 174 184 - 189 - 194 - 200 209 214 226 - 231 - 244 250 - 257 - 266 274 - 286 - 292 AN OLD- STYLE FARM. - ma 1 : a, ie | re)! ute AN OLDSTYLE FARM. OME twenty odd years ago—more or less—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 Connec- ticut. The township in which it lay was a scattered wilderness 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-gath- erer was a sallow-faced shoemaker with club-feet, who sometimes 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 Novem- ber winds swept with a pestilent force, with nothing to break thein, except a pair of twin churches. One 1 9 RURAL STUDIES. of these was Congregational—severely doric, with square-headed windows, painted columns, and a cupola for ornamentation. The other was Episcopal, with sharp-headed windows, and three or four crazy-look- ing 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 taber- nacle; and regret exceedingly to add that, after a fitful and spasmodic life, the Episcopal society which maintained nominal ownership of this turreted 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 appreciaticn of the beautiful Litany. They like long sermons and a “talking out” in prayer. You orI may feel differently ; but the men of the population in the retired districts, where books and newspapers rarely come, want to hear on a Sun- day 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 of horse-sheds, the lack AN OLD-STYLE FARM. 3 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 earnest in his appeals for shelter to the poor brutes, (my little bay mare often shivering among them,) but the charitable en- thusiasm of the good minister counted for nothing ; and to this day, as I am credibly informed, the “ con- templated 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 flam- boyant 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 absentees, and addicted to horse-trading. There was a cooper’s shop upon the sprawling street, in which a great clatter and bang were kept up every work-day upon shad-barrels. There was a carriage-repairing shop, whose restive proprietor once brought suit against me for the non-payment of a bill. (1 am still perfectly satisfied, in my 4 RURAL STUDIES. own mind, that I paid twice for that “ white-oak X,”) There was a green country store, where “ domes- tics” were sold, and West India sugars, and hoes— “ Ames’ best cast-steel””—and, I greatly fear, occa- sional 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 institute, 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 swift strike gave warning of a venturesome, golden-spotted swim- mer 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 AN OLD-STYLE FARM. 5 is to me very charming—charming in those old days when the woods and meadows were new, and charm- ing now when the woods and the meadows are old. Well, well, I began 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 lum- bering coach which from time to time wended along the high-road of the village. The farm was suitably divided (as the old adver- tisements were wont to say) into tillage, meadow, and pasture-lands. This distribution of parts implied that the meadows would furnish enough hay in ordinary seasons for the winter’s keep of such and so many animals, as the pastures carried in good condition through the summer; and the arable land was sup- posed equal to the growth of such grain and vege- tables as would suffice for man and beast throughout the year. It was an old, lazy reckoning of capabili- ties, 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 6 RURAL STUDIES. —suitably divided into tillage, mowing, and pasture- land—but I feel sure that the advertiser is a respect- able, old-fashioned gentleman, who keeps a long-tailed black coat for Sundays and training-days, and who has inherited his agricultural opinions from a very dull and stiffnecked ancestry. ‘Such announcements —and they are to be seen not unfrequently in the journals—impress me very much as the advertise- ment 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 inequalities of surface, which must retain for an indefinite period their office for simple grazing purposes; but, with rare excep- tions, there are not anywhere in the northeastern States any considerable stretches of meadow capable of growing the better English grasses, which are not susceptible of improvement under occasional tillage. Draining, indeed, may be first needed, and a scarify- ing with the harrow, to root out the old mosses and foul growth; but after this, a clean lift of the plow and judicious 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 intermission; here and there, where these AN OLD-STYLE FARM. "i 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 barnyard, over the interven- ing 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 timothy—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 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 refreshing influences of the rivulets alone. Four or five such straggling brooklets murmured down from the pasture high-lands, and a Devonshire farmer would have given to each one a wide and wealth-giv- ing distribution over acres and acres of the slanting meadows. But there was nothing of this. They watered their little rod-wide margin of succulent 8 RURAL STUDIES. grasses, then dropped away into some marshy flat, where the flags and rushes grew rampantly, until these too gave place to alders, poison sumacs, soft maples and black-ash trees. The fences were as motley as the militiamen’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 continua- tion of a great range of barrier which separated the hill-lands from the flat. In this erection each owner’s views of economy (no other views being recognized) 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 direction, for the sake of excluding some unfortunate little group of imnocent rocks. But the sinners and the well-doers, on the score of the wall- ing, must have long before gone to their account, since the stones were all mossy, and the frequent gaps had been blocked up by lopping 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 barrier was no proof against the clambering propensities of the sheep; and AN OLD-STYLE FARM. 9 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—a great array of blackberry briers, of elders, of dog-willows, of dried stems of golden-rod, of raspberries, and of pretentious wild- cherries. 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 unfortunate 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 asa file of tipsy soldiers 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 overgrow- ing them, and poisonous vines—the three-leaved Ampe- ies 10 RURAL STUDIES. lopsis 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 upon it such 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 melan- choly 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— AN OLD-STYLE FARM. ll at least not in the way of that liberal and generous culture which insures the largest product. I 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 thou- sands 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 con- fident that seven out of ten of the most accomplished and successful nurserymen, gardeners, and farmers in the country, are of foreign birth, or of foreign parent- age. 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 disposed to make up the tale of his profits by sharp bargains, the Scotch are as much disposed to make it up by liberal treatment of the land. Why is this? The American is not illib- eral 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. Is the Congressional grant for agricultural colleges 12 RURAL STUDIES. 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 madesome more vigorous practical demonstration than they have made thus far. The bearings of science upon agriculture were well taught previously under the wing of the established universities; 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 thousands 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 wis- dom 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 honesty and good intentions of those who have become the supervisors of this great trust ; but I am strongly of the assurance that the common sense of the country is largely dis- posed to ask of the scientific gentlemen who have been so largely the recipients of this congressional bounty some practical demonstration upon the land, of the faith they hold and teach. AN OLD-STYLE FARM. 13 I come back to the old farm, with its meagre stock and its wide acres. Of course there was some- thing 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 daylight, Seth (by previous orders) having the horse and wagon ready, and by candle- light seeing to the packing of the spring butter—the firkins being enwrapped 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 kreosotic fumes, not 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 caught sight of chil- dren 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 3 14 RURAL STUDIES. road, and gave a “good morning” to the drivers. Then came the toll-gate: I wondered 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 news- papers, 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 but- ter, and said: “ We’re buying 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 trowsers. I am not 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 strees—the poor horse, (I had bought it of the son of our deacon,) wheezing with his twelve-mile drive—my own empty faint stomach —the glimpses of the beautiful river between the hills to my friend the grocer at thirteen cents! I hope he and the golden butter which I must needs sell AN OLDSTYLE FARM. 15 had never any qualms of conscience ; but it is a faint hope to entertain of grocers. 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 df the lambs and wool. The lambs counted ordi- narily—leaving out the losses of the newly dropped ones by crows* and foxes—some hundred or more. And 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 luxu- riant growth of herbage which springs from freshly cleared high-lying wood-lands. In piquancy and rich- ness, 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 delivered 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 * Enthusiastic bird-lovers will learn, may be with surprise, that crows are capable of this mischief, but it is even true. Their vil- lainous 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 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 deliberately plucking away the eyes from the socket. 16 RURAL STUDIES. the city would bring to-day nearly five dollars. The wool was bought up by speculators in that time, and the speculators were not extravagant. 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 wool, and during the late autumn months, came the cartage of wood—some eight miles—to a port upon the river, at which four dollars 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 vener- able porkers, and in an adjoiming 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 October. Day after day, through May, through June, came the unwearied round of milking, of driy- ing to pasture, of plowing, of planting; day after day the sun beat hotter on the meadows, on the plow- land, on the reeking sty; day after day the buds unfolded—the pink of orchards hung in flowery sheets over the scattered apple trees; the dogwood threw AN OLD-STYLE FARM. 17 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 occasional “ 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 a very dreamy indolence, which, I must confess, was somehow vastly enjoyable. Nothing to see? Lo, the play of light and shade over the distant hills, or the wind, making tossed and streaming wavelets on the rye. Nothing to hear? Wait a moment and you shall listen to the bursting melodious roundelay 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 exhausted by his brilliant solo, to some swaying twig of the alder bushes. Nothing tohope? The maize leaves through all their close serried ranks are rustling with the promise of golden corn. Nothing to conquer? There are the brambles, the roughnesses, the inequalities, the chill damp earth, the whole teeming swamp-land. I have tried to outline the surroundings and ap- pointments of many a back country farmer of New England to-day. I am sure the drawing is true, because it is from the life. I seem to see such an one now on one of these May mornings an hour before 18 RURAL STUDIES. sunrise. It is his market day, and the old sorrel mare is harnessed, and tied to the hitch-post. The wagon is of antique shape, bulging out in front and rear, and with half-rounded ends.’ The high-backed seat is sup- ported upon a V-shaped framework of ash, and coy- ered 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, clambers 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 hus- band) 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 ‘AN OLD-STYLE FARM. 19 talk of the new “ howsen” along the way; they dis- cuss the last Sunday’s sermon: Enos says, “ Pve 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 wagein, Enos ?” “No, I vum! I forgot it,” says Enos. “ What a plaguey careless creeter yow’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 “ cal- iker ” gown (fast colors) for Sally Ann. Pater-fami- lias sees to the filling of the flat jug, he makes a fair sale of the two quarters of veal, he buys a few “ gard- ing” 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 believed, and still believe, that the dead life upon the back country New England farms, is capable of being stirred into alive 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 there some clump of giant oaks or chestnuts 20 RURAL STUDIES. about a loitering brooklet,) the cattle quadrupled in number, the muck-lands yielding their harvests to be composted with the concentrated manures of the town, the very walls to be straightened (of which a beginning had been made), and such stir and move- ment and growth and cumulative fertility as should make the neighborhood open its eyes wide, and stare toa purpose. I saw the wasting rivulets dammed and distributing their fertilizing 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 phantasmagoria— London Bridge, St. Paul’s, Prince Hal, Fleet Street, Bolt Court, Kenilworth, 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 AN OLD-STYLE FARM. 21 Lancashire, wondering at that orderly, systematic cultivation of which New England had not dreamed —wondering at the grand results of this liberal and generous culture, and more than ever disgusted at the pinched and starveling way in which my countrymen were cheating the land of its opulent privilege of pro- duction. I have written this little descriptive episode of a farm-life in New England to serve as the background for certain illustrative bints toward the amendment of rural life—whether in matters of good husbandry, or of good taste; I have furthermore ventured upon certain 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, shear- ing sheep, or sowing turnips. Therefore, in any future references which I may make in the course of these papers to farm life, I trust that my good readers will credit me with a certain connaissance de cause. £.”..* - vs A - iy ; = * ¥ ‘ : 5 . Z ee ro . bd - a Ay -o = a . ¢ " _ ¥) ~ .— ’ i : ‘ _ as is . - i i . i ay — Uy az 7 = 7 - - - _— : ’ : a - @ a i . 1 | aa 4 oo ae - a - Il. ADVICE FOR LACKLAND. Pomologists and Common People. DO not know that the Horticulturists 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 devoted to Horticulture might lead him into a great many extrav- agances 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 garden 9 a 26 RURAL STUDIES. or orchard, can never be brought to that care and nicety of observation, which, with the devoted Hor- ticulturist, is a second nature. Most men goto 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 be- hind 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 fatigues 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 Jabor as shall not overtax their time, or plunge them into the anxieties of a new and en- grossing 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 druggist were ADVICE FOR LACKLAND. 24 to talk about the comparative influences of potash or of some simple styptic upon an irritated mucous membrane, to aman who wants simply—something to cure a sore throat. It is the aim of the Horticul- turist to push both land and plants to the last limit of their capacity—to establish new varieties—to pro- voke nature by incessant pinchings into some abnor- mal development ; whereas the aim of the mass of suburban residents is to havea 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 what- ever, they are grossly mistaken. Ifa mere, bald love of fruit-eating, without any love for the means 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 laid down between the aims of the Pomologists and of the quiet country liver. And I am strongly inclined to think that the former are a little too much disposed 28 RURAL STUDIES. to sneer at the simple 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 written 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 colored Wil- - son, and stick by them, I do not know that the zeal- ous Pomologist has a right to condemn me utterly, because I do not root up my strawberry patches and plant Russell’s Prolific, or the Jocunda 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 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 ADVICH FOR LACKLAND. 29 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 pro- fessional service it is to guzzle small draughts of Chateaux 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 Bor- deaux 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, demanding both skill and devotion ; nor have I said it from any want of respect for those pomologists who are boldly lead- ing the van in the prosecution of the Art; but I have wished simply 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 my- self my old friend Lackland, who has grown tired of 30 RURAL STUDIES. thumping over the city pavements, who has two or three young children to whom he wishes to give a free tumble on the green sward, and who has an in- tense desire 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 giv- ing any intelligible advice to aman 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'll be flitting when the leaves are gone?” “To be sure,” says he, “it’s worth considering. And yet what difference could it make with your suggestions? Once established, I could determine better.” “Tt makes this difference :—if you propose to es- tablish a permanent home for the year, you want to provide against wintry blasts; you don’t want a hill- top 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 boom- ing 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 ADVICE FOR LACKLAND. 31 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 thorough- ly, 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 cozy home, where his children can romp to their hearts’ content, and he—take a serene pleasure in plucking his own fruit, pulling his 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 Hor- ticulture, 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 ber- ries 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 spreading over my face, 392 RURAL STUDIES. “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, yowll make a fine show; they'll elect you member of a Horticultural Society; heaven only knows but they’ll name you on a tasting committee.” “That would be jolly,” says he. “ And yowll need plenty of bass-matting, and patent labels, and lead wire, and a box of grafting instruments, and brass syringes of different capacities, and gauze netting for some of your more delicate fruits, and porcelain saucers to float your big goose- berries 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 fellow, 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 got. You want to take things easy; you don’t want to ADVICE FOR LACKLAND. 33 torment yourself 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'll 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 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. Ifa veteran mossy pear tree is in your door-yard, groom it as you would a horse—just in from a summering in briary pastures—put scions of Bartlett, of Win- ter 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 O%* 34 RURAL STUDIES. tree. Save some sheltered spot for a trellis, where you may plant a Delaware, an Iona or two, a Re- becca, and a Diana. Put a Concord at your south- side door—its rampant growth will cover your trellised porch ina pair of seasons: it will give you some fine clusters, even though you allow it to tangle: the pomologists 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 her- baceous flowers that shall care for themselves, and which the children may pluck with a will. Don’t distress yourself if your half acre of lawn shows some hummocks, or dandelions, 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. ADVICE FOR LACKLAND. 35 Lackland Makes a Beginning. Y friend Lackland—as I suspected he would— has purchased a little place of two and a half acres, some thirty or forty miles from the city by the New Haven railway. He makes his trips to and fro with a little badly-disguised fear of decayed ‘ sleepers,” it is true ; and suffers from the still more all the seats being occupied, and the company being frequent embarrassment of riding upon his feet unfortunately too much straitened in their circum- stances 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 indig- nant 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 submissive. And after a 36 RURAL STUDIES. fatiguing day in Maiden Lane, having come up Fourth Avenue with a stout woman in his lap, he is grateful for even a standpoint upon one of the New Haven 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, however, 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 distributed into six different enclosures, of which I send you a draught.” And herewith I give the exhibit of Mr. Lack- land’s little place, with its condition at time of pur- chase. “ 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 same ADVICE FOR LACKLAND. 37 <—XONONE 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 enclosure (¢@) 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 remember to have seen. He (former owner) tells me stramonium is good for ‘biles.’ Is it ? “The buildings around the little enclosure marked (7) will explain themselves—a barn, a hog-pen, a cow- shed—all in most dilapidated condition, so much so that I shall have to make a new investment in the 38 RURAL STUDIES. way of stable room. There is the remnant of an old orchard upon the plot marked (4), with only three or four ragged and disorderly looking trees; at (/) 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 7) over- run with briars and stunted cedars, that I fear will cost a round sum to reduce to a level. The fields (¢) 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 from the trees, and back of them a glimpse of the Sound. I send a rough sketch of it. ADVICE FOR LACKLAND. 39 “ 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 encumber- ed with enormous Lawton briars. The first posi- tion is soapy and damp for visitors, and the last— tedious. “ What I wish of you,”—my friend Lackland con- tinues 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 understand- ing 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 ever- greens, 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. “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 40 RURAL STUDIES. 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 pasnips ?’ “TI 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 want provision for a salad on Easter Sunday ; and if you could contrive me some cheap fashion 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 winter 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 potatoe- patch. I want something I may cail a lawn—to ADVICE TO LACKLAND. 4] satisfy my wife’s pride—and a bit or two of shrub- bery 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 humor takes me—try my hand at a premium crop of something.” > ee eRe ings Sxteen.ce os X82 NAGE Upon this I made a little study of Lackland’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— 49 RURAL STUDIES. to plant columbines on its ledges, and your Tom 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. In (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 (A) 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 border (7) which is made under shelter of a high fence to the north. At (c) you have your cheap grapery built against the south-side of the barn, and convenient for the transmutation you suggest; at (0) is your stable, and at (7) your poultry house with a sunny stable court to the south of it. At (mm) you have your paddock for the mare, or your mall for base-ball, or your plow-ground for a premium crop— utterly free from shrubbery, 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 Rhododendrons;* and the * Various horticulturists have discussed the method of isolating a border of rhododendrons from the influences of a forest screen to the south—one suggesting simple amputation of the roots of the ADVICE TO LACKLAND. 43 circle (7) I would advise you to fill with a dense cop- pice of hemlock spruce to break the wind from the north. Along the border marked (%) you can either plant apple trees, and at fifteen feet of distance, a thicker line of dwarf pears (being careful to trench or subsoil the ground), or you can stock it with a pro- tecting belt of evergreens. In either case, give thorough cultivation, if you wish the best results. At (a) is the “ brand-new ” house remodelled in such fashion that you 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 sum- mer. 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 magnificent 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. 44 RURAL STUDIES. Lackland’s House Plans. ; NFORTUNATELY, 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 gentlemen, in nine cases out of ten, would be—“ not to do it.” 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 Broadway. 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 ADVICE FOR LACKLAND. 45 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 circulation as in the town attics. And such tented ceilings may be prettily hung with French striped papers, with a fringe-like border at the line of junction of the verti- cal with the sloping wall—in such sort that your military 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 acentury ; 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 new- 46 RURAL STUDIES. ness 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 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 style 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 swagging door by a stanch one of double- battened oak or chestnut, with its wrought nails show- ing their heads in checkered diamond lines up and down, and its hinges, worked into some fanciful pat- tern of a dragon’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 course, too, there should be the two diamond lights like 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 ADVICE FOR LACKLAND. 47 is among the few who are left in these days of petro- leum, who make a merit of homeliness, and cherish 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 com- fort, 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 bomb- azine; but if the fates put him in leash with an ancient lady, let him think twice before he bedizens her gray head with preposterous frontlets, and puts a mesh of girl’s curls upon the nape of her old neck. I have said all this asa prelude to a little talk about certain changes which my friend Lackland has wrought in his country place—thirty miles away by the New Haven road. The house he purchased could boast no respectability of age. The height of its rooms was of that medium degree which neither sug- gested 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 apartment below stairs which had a southern aspect. I give his 48 RURAL STUDIES. 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 car- penter 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 en- trance-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 sunny porch upon which the early vines will clamber, and under whose eaves the Phebe birds will make their nests. ADVICE FOR LACKLAND. 49 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 with a 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 absurd cock-loft look that would be unendurable. “Mrs. L. and myself have scored out an incredible number of diagrams—all which have been discussed, slept on, admired, and eventually condemned. Some- times it is the old pinched entrance way that works 3 50 RURAL STUDIES. condemnation ; 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 doesn’t see clearly (being deficient in mathematics) why a closet shouldn’t be made 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, post- tively 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.” 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 win- dow to your library, which, if the rural tastes grow upon you, you can extend into a conservatory, cover- ADVICE FOR LACKLAND. 51 ing 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 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—throwing the intervening space between it and kitchen into store 52 RURAL STUDIES. 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 possi- ble 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, 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 library; 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 ar- rangement, which mark a man’s house as his own, how- ever much they may put the carpenters to the gape. ADVICE FOR LACKLAND. 53 “ 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 irredeemable gawkyness. If the space be needed, find it by throwing a mansard roof over all, and lighting your cock-lofts with dormer windows. Then paint with discretion ; avoid white, and all shades of lilace—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. In i i H all | | f the trimmings, study narrowly the gradients of color. Let there be no forced contrasts, and no indecisive mingling of tones; above all, remember that with 54 RURAL STUDIES. your elevations, you want to aim to reduce the ap- parent height ; work in, therefore, as many horizontal lines of decisive color as your exterior 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 shad- ing. ; “¢ When you are fairly in, I will come and see how you look.” Lackland’s Gardener. ITH his grounds laid out and his house in fairly habitable condition—according to the plans already laid before the reader—Lackiand holds various consultations in regard to a proper gardener —consults as in duty bound, first of all, Mrs. Lack- land. 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 direc- tions, 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, ADVICE FOR LACKLAND. 55 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, he is so confounded with their talk about ranges, and pits, and bottom heat, and Pelargoniums, and Orchids, that he withdraws in disgust. He consults the newspapers, where he finds a con- siderable array of advertisements of “ steady, capable men, willing to make themselves useful upon a gentle- > he communicates with some two or man’s place ;’ three of the most promising advertisers, and arranges for an interview with them. Lackland has great faith, like almost all the men J ever met, in his study of physiognomy. About a man’s temper or his honesty, he can hardly be mistaken, 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.” o* 56 RURAL STUDIES. “ And, Patrick, you could harness a horse some- times if it were necessary.” “ Horses, and indade, yis, sir; ye may jist say ’m at home in a stable, sir.” “And the poultry, Patrick, you could look after the poultry, couldn’t you?” ‘“« And indade, sir, that’s what I can ; there’s niver aman 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 perfect jewel of aman.” 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 vegetables ever heard of by either party to the counsel, have been added to the list. If a man have a garden, why not enjoy all that a garden can pro- duce—egeg-plants, and okra, and globe artichokes, 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 im- pressively enumerates the different labels (Patrick not being competent to the reading of fine print, as he freely confesses), repeats after her, “ Naples radish, yis, m’am}; artichokes, yis, m’am; okra, yis, m’am.” ADVICE FOR LACKLAND. E74 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 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 judicious O’Donohue. The cabbages and the radishes come forward with a jump. Their expedition forms a pleasant theme for the physiological meditation of Lackland. He is delighted with the stable manure, with the cabbage 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, Lackland 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 germination. “What does all this mean?” says Lackland ; “the cabbages are dead, Patrick.” “Yis, sir—it’s the hate, sir. The sun is very strong here, sir; we must give ’em a little more air, sir.” 58 RURAL STUDIES. And they get the air—get the air (by a little for- getfulness 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 peppers to the same atmospheric conditions in the forcing frame. The result is that Lackland buys his first salads in the market, and his first peas 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 proper- ties. “ But how is this,” says the long-suffermg Lack- land, at last, “‘ our neighbors are all before us, Pat- mick? 2? “ Well, sir, it?s me opinion that the land is a bit cowld, sir. Wait till July, sir, and you'll see vigi- tables.” And Patrick grubs away with a great deal of ADVICE FOR LACKLAND. 59 misdirected energy—slicing off, in the heat of his endeavor, two or three of Mrs. Lackland’s choicest rocket larkspurs; 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 ’twas a larkspur. Pity, pity ; and so it was, indade, a larkspur? Well, well, but it’s lucky it wa’nt 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 you may lie down under the trees, and frolic with your chil- dren, or smoke a pipe under your vine, or clambering rose-tree at evening—find a gardener whois thorough- 60 RURAL STUDIES. ly 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 walk- ing-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 toa 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 home, in which you take, and will never cease to take, a per- sonal interest and pride—if all this be true, and you have as good as three hours a day to devote to per- sonal superintendence—then, by all means, forswear all gardeners who come to you with great recom- mendations of their proficiency. However just these ADVICE FOR LACKLAND. 61 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 efforts 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 cab- bages, but you will know better another 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 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 advices you find in the newspapers,—and of this you will speedily be cured. In short, whoever is serious about this matter, 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 gardener, 62 RURAL STUDIES. 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 Lackland, 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. A Pig anda Cow. { 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, ADVICE FOR LACKLAND. 63 sooner or later, of a cow and a pig—the pig to con- sume 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 ani- mal; Virgil, indeed, introduces him as crunching acorns under elm-trees—which account 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. There is almost the same diversity of opinion with respect to the different races of pigs, which our horti- cultural friends indulge in with respect to fruits. It is always an awkward matter to discuss the merits of different families, whether of animals who talk, or animals who only grunt or bellow. If the raw sub- urban 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 material, I should cer- tainly advise the great-boned Chester County race, which, with judicious feeding, come to most elephan- tine proportions. If, on the other hand, he should prefer a dapper, snug-jointed beast, that shall not be particular in regard to food, and which will yield him 64 RURAL STUDIES. 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 desire a delicate limbed, well-rounded, contented little animal, that shall browse with equa- namity 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 away of the beast’s own tail, which do not contribute to good looks.* All this is but preparatory to my reply to Lack- land, who writes to me: ‘ We have voted to have a pig and a cow; what kinds 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 punc- tilious 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 sup- * T 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, ADVICE FOR LACKLAND. 65 plied 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 cleanliness; and if the only aim were a roaster for your table and accumulation of fat, there 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 stye 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 purs- lane, 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 66 RURAL STUDIES. corner, who squeals his entreaty, and declares thanks with the click-clack of his active jaws. “ He will take on larger and clumsier proportions month by month, and will be none the 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 addi- tional 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 terrible instigators of indiges- tion that I know; and I want no better theory for that charming writer’s occasional periods of bitter despondency, than to suppose him to have dined ‘ at seven, sharp,’ upon the dish he has so pleasantly and fearfully extolled. “T do not mean to say that exception is not to be ADVICE FOR LACKLAND. 67 made in favor of a good rasher of bacon at breakfast, with a fresh egg (from the cock—as a city friend once suggested in a flow of cheery, rural exuberance) ; nor do I think anything 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 delicately a fricandeau of veal. But, as for pork chops, or pork roast, or pork boiled, to be eaten as the chief piece nutritive of a dinner—it is an abomi- nation! Our friends the Jews have not only Scrip- tural reason in the thing, but reasons physiological. “ And now, my dear fellow, having despatched 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 vigilance, some three to four loads of choice compost to contribute to the vegetable growth of the next season. There is a notion that manure from such a source provokes the growth of club-foot in cabbages and cauliflowers; but after repeated trials with a view to fix this averment, I am unable to do so. 68 RURAL STUDIES. 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 stye. 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 neg- lected, is to remove 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 indignities, and will yield you all the milk and the butter you need, and possibly the cheese. “‘T remember that a city gentleman of great horti- cultural (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, than why you should not have strawberries giving two quarts to the plant.’ “T was not prepared to gainsay the proposition. The truth is, I feel a certain awe of distinguished ADVICE FOR LACKLAND, 69 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 premiums at a New York Horticultural Society, and is taster ex-officio at the Farmer’s Club ? “T did not argue the matter with him; I sub- mitted ; 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 family, is not always 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 purchase of an animal, I dare say you will have Wall Street friends, who will talk grandly of 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- 0 RURAL STUDIES. 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 boun- ties, does not wish an animal that must invariably be “kept under the best possible 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 better breeding and full returns to the milk pail. But if you have a fancy for cream that is fairly golden, and for occa- sional conversion of excess of milk into a little paté of golden butter, nothing will suit your purpose bet- ter than a dainty Alderney, with her fawn-like eyes and yellow skin. | “JT 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 set- ting of her horn—sneer at the comparatively diminu- tive 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 fineness of a fawn’s, their eyes bright and quick as a doe’s; their ADVICE FOR LACKLAND. al 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 docility is a thing of great consequence upon a little 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 submit to the confinement. The sleek Alderneys inherit a capacity for this thing, and I have 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 72 RURAL STUDIES. 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-feed- ing, 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. ] _ : : Il. WAY-SIDE HINTS. Talk about Porches. 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 protection against the rain-beat and the sun-beat. It is an inter- preter of character; it humanizes bald walls and windows; it emphasizes architectural tone; it gives hint of hospitality ; it is a hand stretched out (figura- tively and lumberingly, 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 Christian charity, and of the wish to give shelter. Of all the images of wayside country churches which keep in my mind, 100 RURAL STUDIES. those hang most persistently and agreeably, which show their jutting, defensive rooflets to keep the brunt of 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 bargaining, and imbues even the small grocer with a flavor of cheap hospitali- ties. The verandas (which is but a long translation of porch) that stretch along the great river front of the Bellevue Hospital, diffuse somehow a gladsome cheer over that prodigious caravansery of the sick ; and I never see the poor creatures in their bandaged heads and their flannel gowns enjoying their conva- lescence in the sunshine 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 bedevilments 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 reasonably imagina- tive 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, Eastcheap? Any question about a porch, and a generous one, at the Taberd, Southwark—pre- WAY-SIDE HINTS. 101 sided 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 memories, all the music of girlish foot- falls, 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 shittim-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 little mantling hood about every exterior door-way, however humble. There are hundreds of naked, vulgar-looking dwellings, scattered up and down our country high- roads, which only need a little deft and adroit adap- tation of the hospitable feature which I have made the sub;ect of this paper, to assume an air of modest grace, in place of the present indecorous exposure of “a wanton. 102 RURAL STUDIES. 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 present 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 incon- gruity ; 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 joinery of the day—the endless scroll-work (done cheaply, by new methods of machine sawing)—the portentous moulding—the arches, whose outlines are from By- zantium or the new Louvre—columns whose propor- tions are improved from the Greeks—capitals whose fretting sculpture outranks the acanthus. Seriously, I think the carpenters, if left to their own efflo- rescence, now-a-days, can out-match Demorest or any of the wide-hooped milliners. We seem to have drifted into an epoch of the largest and crudest flam- boyance—in morals, in brokerage, in carpentry, in (may I not say ?) congressional eloquence. A sober, simple-minded man is worse than lost in the new hand Af mnrovers WAY-SIDE HINTS. 103 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 pre- rogatives once more, will not surely do so by tying tow-bags at the back of her head and widening her skirts indecorously. But she will bring her old man- ner 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 porches, I venture to give upon the next page a rough drawing of one of the plainest conceivable. It is a sort of cross between the Dutch stoop and the lumbering rooflet which in 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, 104 RURAL STUDIES. 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 fr ANNAN 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 villages. People do not instruct their carpenters to build such doors now; yet I can conceive of worse ones, glazed up and WAY-SIDE HINTS. 105 down, with blue and yellow and green glass, in most irritating conjunction. Ido not know that I would absolutely 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 turmoil of our latter half of the century, [ would certainly cherish them ; or if [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 battling without vestige of roof- let, with sun and rain) some such quaint, overhang- ing beacon of hospitality as I have pictured; I am sure the houses would take on a double homeliness, 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, England. It belongs, certain- ly, by its whole air and by its arrangement, to a country where stones of good, straight-splitting qual- ity (such as gneiss) are plentiful, and are used for unpretending cottage architecture. It would seem to have pertained to a house of very modest character 5* 106 RURAL STUDIES. 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 accom- plished 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 purposes, 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 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. WAY-SIDE HINTS. 107 I give still another design copied rudely from an actual porch at Ambleside (Westmoreland) ; it was shading the door, some fifteen 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 108 RURAL STUDIES, the end coming swift. But a good, stanch tree trunk, cut in its best season (late autumn), is a very toler- able sort of God’s work, and, 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 material 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 sassafras, which, after its tenth year, takes on a picturesque roughness and a rhinoceros- like thickness of skin, which admirably fits it for rustic use. The white ash, assuming after fifteen years a similar thickness of outer covering, holds its coat with almost equal tenacity. The ordinary “ pig- nut ” hickory holds its bark well; the oak does not ; neither does the chestnut. The cedar is perhaps most commonly 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 uncommon appetite for the sapwood of cedar), it may hold its shaggy epidermis for along time. I would suggest to those using it for architectural 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 objectionable odor WAY-SIDE HINTS. 109 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 sur- face, than young saplings or trees of rapid growth. But, irrespective of all questions of durability, is there not something rurally attractive in this unpre- tending 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 show- ing 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 chali- ces to catch the dews of the morning—is there noth- ing to be emulated in this? Let those who love God’s simplest graces, answer. On Not Doing All at Once. HERE are a great many ardently progressive people who will be shocked by the caption under which I write. The current American theory 110 RURAL STUDIES. 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 there are a great many good objects in life which are accomplished better by gradual progression to- ward 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 discussed— but I shall urge a graduation and culmination of triumphs in what relates to rural life and its charms. One meets, from time to time, with a gentleman from the city, smitten with a sudden rural faney, who is in eager search for a place ‘“‘made to his hand,” with the walks all laid down, the entrance-ways es- tablished, the dwarf trees regularly planted, the con- servatory a-steam, and the crocheted turrets fretting the sky-line of the suburban villa. But I never heard of any such seeker after perfected beauties who was an enthusiast in country 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 WAY-SIDE HINTS. ital he has none of that exquisitely-wrought satisfaction which belongs to the 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 attractions to the cumulating charms of his home. The man of capital, who buys into an established business, where the system is perfected, the trade regular and constant, the details unvaried, may very pos- sibly congratulate himself upon the security of his gains; but he knows nothing of that ardent and in- toxicating enthralment which belongs to one who has grown up with the business—suggested its en- terprises—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 init. Therefore, I would say to any one who is thoroughly in earnest about a country home—make it for yourself. Xenophon, who lived in a time when Greeks were Greeks, advised people in search of a country place to buy of a slatternly and careless farmer, since in that event they might be sure of seeing the worst, and of making their labor and care work the lar- 112 RURAL STUDIES. gest results. Cato,* on the other hand, who rep- resented 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 gwn 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 pursuit,—whether grape-growing, or literature, or ballooning, or poli- tics,—who did not find his chiefest pleasure in fore- casting successes, not yet made, but only dimly con- ceived of, and ardently struggled for. The more enthusiasm, the more evidence, I should say, in a general way, of incompletion and apparent confusion. Show me a cultivator whose vines are well trained by plumb and line, whose trees are every one planted mathematically in quincunx order, whose dwarfs are all clipped and braced after the best pyra- midal pattern, and I feel somehow that he is a fash- ionist, that he reposes upon certain formulas beyond * T shall make no apology for the introduction of these two heathen names, since both authors have written capitally well on subjects connected with husbandry and rural life. WAY-SIDE HINTS. 113 which he does not think it necessary to explore. But where I see, with an equal degree of attention, irreg- ularity and variety of treatment,—tendrils a-droop and fruit-spurs apparently neglected,—I am not un- frequently impressed with the belief that the cultiva- tor 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 respect- fully, 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 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 succeed- 114 RURAL STUDIES. ing developments. If, for instance, my friend Lack- land, whose place I have described in previous pages, had found a landscape gardener capable of inaugurat- ing all the changes I have described, and had estab- lished his garden, his mall, his shrubberies, and had made the cliff in the corner nod with its blooming columbines, within a month after occupation, and established his dwarf pears in full growth and fruit- age, there may have been a glad surprise; but the very completeness of the change would have left no room for that exhilaration of spirits, 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 alternations 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 possi- bly some swift strike may be made—the sway of his rod, and the whiz of his reel under the dash of some strugeling 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 attractiveness les, or should lie, in its prospective growth of charms. Your city home—when once the architect, and plumber, and upholsterer have done their work—is in a sense complete, and the added charms must lie in the genial WAY-SIDE HINTS. 115 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 estab- lishment of a meadow (by judicious drainage) where some ugly marsh has offended the eye; and the suc- ceeding summer may show the redemption of the harsh briary up-land that you have scourged into fertility 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 curbing of the limbs of some over- growing poplar; and next year—if need be—a lop- ping away of the tree itself to expose a fresher beauty in the shrubbery beneath. Most planters about a country home are too much afraid of the axe; yet judicious cutting 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 effects of foliage in landscape gardening—after the fifth year— the axe is quite as important an implement as the 116 RURAL STUDIES. 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 de- clivities, 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 order to ensure free stooling or (as we say) sprouting. The black birch, which I have named, and which is a very beau- tiful tree—not as yet, I think, fairly appreciated by our landscapists—will not stool with vigor, if cut after it has attained considerable size; but the sap- lings of three or four years, if cut within a foot of the ground, will branch off into a rampant 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 aspect of such country places as commend themselves in other respects. The sub- jugation 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 WAY-SIDE HINTS. nal for months together some startling defect 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 roughnesses in a 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. Ploughing and Drilled Crops. NE of the most striking of those contrasts which arrest the attention of an intelligent agricul- tural 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 118 RURAL STUDIES. offending the patriotic susceptibilities of a great many—tbat not one American farmer in twenty knows what really good plowing is. Over and over, the wiseacres at the county fairs give their first pre- miums 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 level surface. Buta flat furrow, with ordinary implements, involves a broad cut and a consequent diminution of depth. The perfection ofplowing upon sward-land implies, on the contrary, little pyramidal ridgelets of mould, run- ning 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 unevenness. 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 surface 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 % WAY-SIDE HINTS. 119 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 regard to American plows, which, from the fact that they have received occasional commendatory prizes from foreign committees, have been counted by the san- guine superior to all other implements of the name, and gushing orators have lavished brilliant periods upon our superiority. to the world in this branch of agricultural mechanism. Nothing surely can exceed the best American plows in their adaptation to present American needs. They are light, compact, strong, and in rough lands are by half more manageable than the best English implements. But supposing a great reach of well-tilled and perfectly cleared field, and the improved iron Scotch plow will lay a far more true and even furrow with one half the expendi- ture of manual force. Under such circumstances, the great weight of the Scotch implement, 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 * 120 RURAL STUDIES. seizure of all economic methods, our implement makers will adapt themselves to the new demands with that shrewdness which has thus far been so characteristic of their efforts. Again, we have no regularly educated plowmen 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 better. But good plowing is a thing of education, as much as good preaching, or carpentering, or shoemaking, or writing. Nothing but experience gives the final and effective vis manu- tigii. With the wonderful division of labor in all old countries, every agricultural laborer has his special province and domain of work. And it is quite absurd to suppose that a man who plows only a month out of the twelve can have anything like that due knowledge of the craft, which one acquires by handling the plow- stilts 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 appren- tices to the plow, in America there is none. Every man who can use a hoe or a pitch-fork is supposed to WAY-SIDE HINTS. 121 be a competent tailsman for the plow. The result is —execrably bad work. And I would respectfully 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 ambitious young farmers (every fall time) into the merits of good plowing. I have not, indeed, the slightest idea that the purveyors of this Congres- sional agricultural charity would, in most instances, be capable 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 Ameri- cans willing to learn. Another noticeable feature in European field man- agement, 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 ap- plied directly to the plants, and the same distributed —by a transverse plowing the succeeding season—for the benefit of the cereal which comes next in rota- tion. It may be questionable if our corn crop (maize) will not succeed best 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 6 122 RURAL STUDIES. there can be no doubt of the superior economy, as well as the more orderly appearance of the drill system. Take for instance our ordinary crop of potatoes, (and I think the details of its management 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 involving per bushel a far larger expense for tillage and harvesting, than if dressed, planted, cleaned, and earthed up according to some system which would demand trim lines, even distances, and a complete shading of the whole ground in the season of their most rampant growth. Perhaps I shall not be counted too intolerably practical, if I indicate the actual method of procedure which has been sometimes fol- lowed under my own observation. We will suppose that a good surface of sward-land (requiring a lift by reason of its weediness) is turned over lightly, (and flatly, if you please,) in the month of October. Noth- ing offers better pabulum for potatoes, or indeed 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 command with three horses abreast ; (two will weary of the work.) After this the harrow WAY-SIDH HINTS. 123 is put on again, up and down, and across. There is no fear of harrowing too much. This being accom- plished, and the manure disposed (since March) in huge heaps at either end of the field, three deep fur- rows are opened at, say, two to 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 another 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 fur- rows being opened at the start, permit the plowman to go his rounds without interfering with the plant- ing and dressing. When the whole field is gone over after this system it has simply the appearance of a thoroughly 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, little 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 favor- able to weed growth, it may be necessary to go be- 124 RURAL STUDIES. tween the rows—now most distinctly and luxuriantly marked with tufts of green—with the cultivator; and no future culture is needed until the “ earthing- up” process is accomplished with a 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 ordi- nary, hap-hazard hand tillage. In addition to this there is the delight to the eye of trim rows of luxu- riant foliage, interlacing by degrees, and covering the whole surface with a rich mat of green. If the experts 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. Roads and Shade. LEAVE potatoes and their culture for a further consideration of the more striking contrasts be- tween European and American landscape. Not the least noticeable of these contrasts 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 exceptional. Throughout Great Britain a slatternly and ill-kept one is most rare. There is no particular WAY-SIDE HINTS. 125 reason why a cross-country road for farm traflic only should have the width of a village street; yet one uniform turnpike rule of breadth seems to have pre- vailed in the laying down of all country thorough- fares 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 tarn- pike companies, 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 townships (in Massa- chusetts mostly) which have taken this matter boldly in hand and encouraged order and thrift by whole- some 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, offer 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 landscape lacks that completed charm 126 RURAL STUDIES. which regales the eye along the rural by-roads of England. While town authorities continue to be appointed for their political aptitude, it is useless to hope for any mending of such defects, or for any deliberate scheme of improvement. The most that can be done is by the combination of adjoining proprietors, in which they will have little to hope from the coépera- tion of any town board of advisers. As an instance in point—I have repeatedly offered to undertake full charge of the half-mile of highroad leading through farm lands of my own, guaranteeing amore serviceable condition than the road has yet known, and a dimi- nution of cost to the town of at least twenty per cent., yet the proposition is ignored. The selectmen would lose their little private jobbing in way of repairs, and some future board might annul any such disorderly and unheard of contract. IT have alluded to the planting of trees along high- ways—a practice which many towns have favored by public action, and one contributing largely to the enjoyment of a summer’s drive, as well as adding to the inviting aspect of our country villages. The same practice obtains along the great public highways of France, but not so generally in England where the sunshine is not so common or so fierce as to call for special protection. Even the country houses of Great WAY-SIDE HINTS. 127 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 blooming shrubs. But the full flow of the sunshine upon the window is a thing courted. Allowing for all difference in climate, I think there may be a ques- tion 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 pro- vision 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. 128 RURAL STUDIES. 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 his flower-growth. It should be fairly understood 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 immediate neighbor- hood 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 immedi- ately contiguous to the house is too dense for the vig- orous 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 + WAY-SIDE HINTS. 129 guarded, whatever may become of our old favorites, the trees. 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 effect- ually the fiercest blasts of July. The thatched roofs of Devon and of Somerset are an even greater pro- tection from the sun. English and American Hedging. NOTHER striking subject of contrast between British and Ainerican country road-side, is offered by the numberless array of live hedges which belong to the former, and which probably for genera- tions 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 engrossing too much space, stealing some- what from the productive capacity of the soil, and offering shelter for noxious weeds. The system of soiling is moreover doing away with the necessity for them, and such ground-feeding as is permitted, is more closely and economically controlled by the GS | 150 RURAL STUDIES. 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 progres- sive culture. I recall many a loitering 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 Fyret—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 mois- ture 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 disappeared. The keen tenants, with the per- mission of the landlords, are hunting 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 respect, as well as in the removal of many of the hedges which mark the interior divisions of the farms, the border lines, and WA Y-SIDE HINTS. 131 the way-side still show, throughout the month of “April, that wondrous 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 branchlets 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, show- ing their creeping lines of brown up the hills, and athwart the hills, and in soldierly array flanking every country by-road. When I think of those long billows of green skirt- ing the paths, and look upon my prosaic posts and rails, it seems to me plain enough 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 yosts running across the clayey ground of one of S (=) ce 132 RURAL STUDIES. Gainsborough’s landscapes! Fancy old Walton sit- ting 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-morticed rail-fence ! Yet, poetry apart, we shall probably keep by our timber fences for many generations to come in Ameri- ca; 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 hoth these 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 through- out the country is thoroughly a humbug. It is indeed sadly derogatory to the good sense of our rural popu- lation that pretenders could ever foist a claim in favor of a willow, of any known habit of growth, WAY-SIDE HINTS. 133 upon their acceptance. The osage orange in certain portions 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 hedging. For effective treatment it requires two or three clip- pings in the year. This is more, we fancy, than the holders of Western prairie farms will be willing to bestow. After mature years it may possibly show a more tractable 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 objec- tion of a too luxuriant growth on congenial soils, and of the still more odious objection of a disposition to “sucker,” or send up shoots from the roots at a long remove from the parent stem. The barberry (Berberis vulgaris) is strongly com- mended by many, but it has never yet had, so far as I am 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 root. It sends up indeed a great number of shoots; but shoots of this kind, growing parallel, and showing few leaf: lets, or little side-spray, can never make a compact, or even a graceful hedge. The old-fashioned farmers 134 RURAL STUDIES. of the East have still another objection, 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 barberry, 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 hornbeam, also, of our forests, is a small tree, of profuse spray, bearing the shears ad- mirably ; but, so far as I know, never as yet adopted on 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 man- ageable, 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 WAY-SIDE HINTS. 135 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 experi- ments 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 of their fields, have set them down under the absurdly ill-founded opinion, that thence- forward 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 considerable reward. It is amazing—the short-sightedness which prevails in this regard, not only with respect to hedging, but or- charding, 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 root- lets, such as give nursing to the transplanted stock, are as impatient of any robbery of those sources of 136 RURAL STUDIES. 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 considerate treatment of them during the early years of their establishment. If this careful nurture be requisite in respect to stock from the nurseries, it is ten-fold more important with respect to young plants transferred directly from the forest. Scores of failures I have known on the part of those, who—being delighted with the appear- ance 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 there- after left the shivering field-pensioners to struggle for themselves. The half would very likely or very prop- erly 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 purposes; both the hemlock and Norway spruce, for full development, demand considerable width, more than would be con- WAY-SIDE HINTS. 137 sistent 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 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 somewhat inferior in glossiness and density of foliage) has not yet been commonly intro- duced even among nurserymen. In the way, how- ever, of leafy screens for garden parterres and ter- races, I have great hopes of what may yet be accom- plished 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 138 RURAL STUDIES. Rhododendron in a few shaded swamp-lands where it finds its habitat in New England, is no indication of what may be done with it under fairer conditions 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 variety. The Bay, the Spanish laurel, the Laurestina, will very likely be fastidious in adjusting 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 (hemlock and others), our white pine (Stro- bus), 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 gardener) attempting to establish a protective coppice, and after careful and expensive preparation of the ground (there is nothing lacking on that score), placing his rare evergreens where they will be presently overgrown and lost, or putting out his Rhododendrons where they will have no room for WAY-SIDE HINTS. 159 full and rounded development, or crowding his spruces, and his Deodars, and Scotch pines, so that in afew 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 artistic 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 important—which is learned in ornamental or economic arboriculture. Village Greens. FI 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 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 140 RURAL STUDIES. fountains. And yet the name—Village Green, is, somehow, tenderly cherished ; it rallies to my thought a great cycle of rural memories belonging to song, to childhood, to story and to travel—wherein I see, in bountiful procession, broad-armed elms, dancing peas- ants, 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 il-assorted memories may confound public and private Greens, as well as Eng- lish 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 azalias, tossed their rich fragrance into coach windows,) upon some lifted plateau of land, where the white houses shone among trees, flanking a level bit of greensward, and geese grazed the com- mon; and where was a whipping-post, may be—pos- sibly a decaying pair of oaken stocks, and a court- house with its belfry. I do not think such old village commons of New England, (and I suspect they were rarely to be seen in other parts of the country,) were WAY-SIDE HINTS. 141 ever very nicely kept. The geese cropped the grass short, to be sure; but geese are 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 adventurous hoofs and a muddy margin ; for all this, however, such eyelets of green space in the centre 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 rejoice 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 ser- viceable (I speak of the stocks), they would be ser- viceable now. I think I could mention a fat grocer or two, and two or three editors, or more, who would look well—sitting in the stocks. And as for the whipping-posts, who would not rejoice to see their revival, provided only he could name the incum- bents of the post-office ? But I have no right to speak of the Village Green as wholly a thing of the past, although such symbols of order and discipline as the stocks and the whip- ping-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 142 RURAL STUDIES. 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 railway, 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 coquette in their door-yards, or fences, for the entertainment of each other, but rather for the ad- miration of the public, which must needs pass their doors. But yet—and it is a curious fact in the his- tory of public taste—in these times, when old villages are disembowelled by the railway, and all their showi- ness 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 cau- tiously placated with orderly palings, neat door-yards, an array of grass and flowering shrubs, with a church in imposing position ; but the larger public that now visits the locality is greeted with a terrific array of backsides, of lumbering styes, disorderly fences, and no token that the village world is cognizant of their presence, or careful of their judgment. Of course, the WAY-SIDE HINTS. 143 habit of a village life cannot be changed so quickly as a railway cutting is made—the new world of pro- gress may be upon them before they are aware ; but when actually present, why not meet it with some- thing 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 domesticity, 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 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 reception 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 discovered kicking the cat or indulging in any similar personal gratifications or wants. It is true we do not know one in a thou- sand 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 ? 144 RURAL STUDIES. 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 bearings. 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 remain until the mechanicians shall have devised some airy carriage which shall drop visitants from the clouds upon the threshold of the cosy 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 com- mon carrier ; it is the bond of the town with civiliza- tion; 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 attractive; and if there were no -room for a broad expanse of sward, at least there might be planted some attractive copse of evergreens or shrub- WAY-SIDE HINTS.- 145 bery, 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 welcome the outside world with indications of orderly thrift, bloom- ing 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. Slip- shoddiness is bad economy in towns, as is 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 decision. 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 Hud- son Railways, with their charming suburban retreats near by, to which the occupant must wade his way through all manner of filthiness and disorderly debris, making his landing, as it were, in the very dung-heap of the place, and smacking with a relish, it would seem, these prefatory incidents of his country home. 7 146 RURAL STUDIES. Is there no mending this? Are selectmen all Swine or swineherds? Do city residents count for nothing or care for nothing in the health or air of the railway centre of the towns of their adoption ? Dram-shops, and oyster-shops, and as dirty land-of- fices, will, doubtless, in the present civilization, have position somewhere ; but must they needs be foisted upon the area about the village station? Is no re- demption possible? Must we always confront the town with its worst side foremost? Suppose for a moment that the old Village Green were translated to the neighborhood of the station, or a companion spot of rural attractiveness established there, around which the waiting equipages might circle in attend- ance—suppose a pleasant shade of elms spreading itself upon that now dusty area—suppose the corpo- rate 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—suppose an inviting inn, duly li- censed, 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 Iam equally sure that Iam not writing in advance of the current practice fifty years hence, if only the schools are kept open. The WAY-SIDE HINTS. 147 reputation of a town for order, for neatness, for liber- ality, or taste, is even now worth something, and it is coming to be worth more, year by year. Railway: Gardening. 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 overlooked. Where indeed can there be a hopeful opening for any zesthetic teach- ing, if this inoculation and grafting-point of the busi- ness world with the world ruminant and rural, is al- lowed to fix, with all its ugly swell of swathing band- ages 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 economies of the matter why they should not. The road secures a limited area for the establishment of its station, and some outlying grounds, in most cases, to guard against future con- tingencies—which grounds usually rest in a most 1423 RURAL STUDIES. forlorn condition, giving refuge, may be, to con- demned sleepers or wreck of wheels—possibly ten- anted 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 garbarge. All this the town authorities regard as a matter which con- cerns only the distinguished corporation 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 peo- ple (hee verbi magnificentia !) 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 extend 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 town pride? What if care of all grounds adjoining the station should be subject to some custodian, bound to control them after some WAY-SIDE HINTS. 149 simple prescribed rules of order, whose fulfilment would work an economy to the company, and add a grace to that portion of the village ? I cannot help recalling to mind here some of those charming wayside stations upon the Continent --in France, Germany, and Switzerland—where the station-master is also manager of a blooming garden (the property of the company), which he manages with such tender care that the blush of the roses and the mufiled 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-mas- ters 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 encour- age 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 pro- voked into special inquiries: “This nice treatment involved a great bill of expense doubtless ? ” “ 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.” 150 RURAL STUDIES. “ 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 anew fragrance to the roses, and to the marguerites which he handed me. Now, Iam afraid our station-masters, whether in Massachusetts or along the Hudson, will not be ca- pable of making themselves good florists at a bound ; but yet the hint has its value. What objection can there possibly be to the careful culture of such strips of land as come within the jurisdiction of every sta- tion-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 pilfering) 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 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 WAY-SIDE HINTS. 15l around every station. 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 indifferent, will make a merit of it, and take a pride in pointing out their horticultural successes upon their league-long strips of garden ? One very great advantage in that nice culture 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 suc- cessfully, and in obedience to the best laws of taste and vegetable physiology on some back country prop- erty, may really benefit the public very little, for the reason that the public will never put eye 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 suggestions 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 moments on some day, now far gone, in other latitudes, and of which the scant 152 RURAL STUDIES. memorial is but some jotting down upon a foreign note-book, followed by a scant pencilling of the actual adjustment, so far as the brief stay allowed of tran- script. The chemists tell us that the air of cities and their neighborhood is richer in available nitrogen (in shape of ammonia or nitric acid) than the air of the country, by reason of the outpourings trom 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 always puffing and smoking in the lower strata of the atmo- sphere contribute somewhat, and that not inconsider- ably, to the plants found along the lines of such high- way? Iam not aware that experiment has as yet determined anything on this score; and whatever such determination might be, it is certain that abund- ant sources of fertilization might be secured at every country station, sufficient amply to equip an invest- ing 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 encour- agement of the town, or of neighboring property- holders ; and upon all new lines of railway, wherever new stations are established, everything could be done. To make a township attractive, the approach to it must be attractive. Will not our Western WAY-SIDH HINTS. 1538 burghers who are interested in the growth of town- ships 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. HILE upon this subject of railway gardens and culture, I have a word to say to all who have lands adjoining upon these iron clamps of our present civilization. A great accession of responsi- bility comes to them by reason of their position. A slatternly wall, a disgraceful method of tillage, a reek- ing level of undrained land, in far away districts, may corrupt 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 business 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 advertisement of a farm or garden, fh . 154 RURAL STUDIES. 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 investiga- tion? I know a suburban architect who, by the har- monies and order of a homestead, in full view of a thousand travellers a day, has doubled his business. So the grace of a parterre or the artistic arrangement of aterrace or a walk in the eye of so many, may make the reputation of a gardener. Every 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 careful 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 remote as to admit of all desired seclusion about the dooryard and to yield only distant views of the trail of carri- ages 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 WAY-SIDE HINTS. 155 every intelligent 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 for- bid any extended side views—a tasteful proprietor may still mark his lands noticeably, 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 possibly the trellis of some rustic paling, blooming with flowers, and (if convenience of pathway 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 columbines, to nod their heads between the eye of the traveller and the sky, and make good report, 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 156 RURAL STUDIES. an adventurous nurseryman had given advertisement of his name and calling by an ingenious arrangement of his box-borders in gigantic lettering—not, perhaps, a very legitimate rural decoration, or such as a severe taste would commend—and yet I cannot but think that a little trail of fiery flowers, scattered, as it were, upon a bank of lawn, and spelling out some graceful name (of the homestead), which should be discerni- ble 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 —TI say I can hardly fancy that this would smack of tawdriness. 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 Deodar cedars. The English ivy, too, will grow admirably in such situations, upon a ground surface, taking root here and there, and covering all the lesser imequalities with its glossy network of leaves. Such condition of growth, moreover, (trailing over the surface of the ground,) insures protection by snows; or, if that be wanting, 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 WAY-SIDH HINTS. 157 alernations of temperature, and exposure of its stiff ened leaves to the scalding sunbeams which some- times 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 prop- erty upon the same general level with a lawn surface or farm lands, the rules for adjustment—of crops or of decorative features—so as to carry their best land- scape 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 established 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 control large estates adjoining railways, to ignore, so far as possible, this iron neighbor, and to make all their plans of improvement with a contemptuous disregard of the travelling observers, who count by thousands, considering only the few who look on from the old high-road, or those, still fewer, who have the privilege 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 fel- lows. If he has conceived new lessons of taste, it is 158 RURAL STUDIES. 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 remove from the homestead, is not so awkward a matter to deal with as might at first be supposed. A few years of well-tended growth in a forest screen may be made to exclude it altogether; but care should be taken lest such screen, by its uniformity, should present the same tame outlines with the embankment itself. To avoid this, the woody plantation should flow down in little promontories of shrubbery upon the flat; it should have its open bays upon the embankment it- self, disclosing at intervals a glimpse of the passing trains; and, above all, the bridge or culvert, which keeps good the water-courses of the land, should be distinctly indicated, and might have its simple deco- rative features. All this, if picturesque effect only is aimed at: but if it be desirable to utilize such monster embank- ment, it may be remembered that its shelter, if look- ing to the south, would almost create a summer cli- mate of its own, and would make admirable lee for the forcing-houses of the gardeners, and for the growth of whatever plants or vegetables crave the WAY.SIDE HINTS. 159 first heats of the spring sun. The traveller will recall the “little Provence,” in the garden of the Tuileries, where, by the mere shelter of a twelve-foot terrace wall circling around against cool winds, a summer balmi- ness is given to the locality even in winter, and phthi- sical old men and feeble children find their way thither to luxuriate in the sunshine. If, on the other hand, such embankment flank the north, its shadow will offer capital nursery-ground for the rhododendrons, ivies, and all such plants as are impatient of the free blast of the sun. And, after all, if these happy accidents of posi- tion and opportunity did not favor such special culture, it should be the duty and the pride of the true artist in land-work to ascertain what other growths would be promoted by exceptional disturbances of surface. The finest and highest triumphs in landscape art are wrought out in dealing with portentous features of ugliness, and so enleashing them with the harmonies of a given plan as to extort admiration. The railway, with its present bald embankments, and its baldness of all sorts, is a prominent feature in many of our suburban landscapes. It cannot be ignored, and the study must be to harmonize its sweep of level line, its barren slopes, its ugly scars, its deep cuttings, with the order and grace of our fields and homes. Rains and weather-stains and wild 160 RURAL STUDIES. growths are doing somewhat to mend the harshness ; but a little artistic handling of its screening foliage, and adroit seizure of the opportunities furnished for special culture, will quicken the work. And it is to this end that I have thrown out these hints upon so novel a subject as that of railway gardening. LAYING OUT OF GROUNDS. LAYING OUT OF GROUNDS. Landscape Gardening. “Sit an art or a trade that I propose for discus- sion? I think it is an art. The backwoodsman would not agree with me; there are many plethoric citizens who would not agree. Good roads, and paths laid where you want them, and plenty of shade trees —is there anything more than this in the laying out of grounds? Is there any finesse, any special aptitude requisite, or anything that approaches the domain of art in managing the matter, as such matter should be managed ? I think there is; and that it is an art as yet, in this country, almost in its infancy; and yet an art instinctively appreciated by cultivated persons wher- ever it declares itself, whether upon a small or a large area. 164 RURAL STUDIES. We have admirable engineers who can lay down an approach road, or other, with easy grades, and great grace—so far as the curves count for grace ; and we have gardeners who shall lay down your flower- beds and grounds for shrubbery according to the newest rules, and with great independent beauties in themselves ; but it is quite possible that both these classes of workers may fill their designs admirably, and yet steer clear of the great principles of the art I purpose to discuss. It is an art which takes within its purview good engineering and good architectural work, and good gardening, and good farming, if you please ; but which looks to their perfect accordance— which dominates, in a sense, the individual arts named, and accomplishes out of the labors of each a congruous and captivating whole. Good farming, good gardening, good engineering, and good architecture may stand side by side upon a given estate, and yet, for want of due conception of what the landscape really demands for its completed charm, the effect may be incongruous and unsatisfy- ing. Over and over again a wealthy proprietor seeks to supply the somewhat that is lacking by inordina- tive and cumulative expenditure: he may thus make outsiders wonder and gape; he may also secure a great assemblage of individual beauties; but the charming oneness of effect which shall make his place LAYING OUT OF GROUNDS. 165 an exemplar of taste and a perpetual delight is some- how wanting. The true art of landscape gardening lies in such disposition of roadways, plantations, walks, and build- ings as shall most effectively develop all the natural beauties of the land under treatment, without con- flicting (or rather in harmony) with the uses to which such lands may be devoted. Thus, in a private estate, home interests and conveniences must be kept steadily in view, and these must never be sacrificed for the production of a pictuesque effect, however striking in itself. Again, in a public park the same law obtains, and any good design for such must show great ampli- tude of roadway, and broad, open spaces for the dis- port of the multitude. Upon farm-lands, which I hold to be not without the domain of landscape treat- ment, there must be due regard to the offices of rural economy, and the decorative features may be safely brought out in the shape of gateways, belts of pro- tecting shrubbery, or scattered coppices upon the pasture-lands. Upon ground entirely level, the range of possible treatment is, of course, very much limited ; but the true artist in landscape effects can do some- thing even with this; no architect worthy of the name despairs if he is confined to four walls of even height ; in his own art, if he loves it, he finds deco- rative resources. 166 RURAL STUDIES. I have alluded to the possibility of artistic land- scape treatment in connection with farm-lands ; this opinion is, ] am aware, opposed to the traditional theory of the British writers upon the subject ; but we are living in advance of a good many traditions of that sort. The Duke of Marlborough keeps the open glades of his park-land short and velvety by his herd of fallow deer. Our wealthy citizen, on the other hand, will probably keep his largest stretch of level land in presentable condition with a Buckeye Mower, and will depend upon the cutting as a win- ter’s baiting for his Alderney heifers; but this will not forbid an occasional group of oaks or maples, or the massing of some graceful shrubbery around an intruding cliff. It will never do, indeed, for us as Americans to sanction the divorce of landscape from .our humbler rural intentions—else the great bulk of our wayside will be left without law of improvement. Not only those broad and striking effects which belong to a great range of field and wood, or to bold scenery, come within the domain of landscape art, but those lesser and orderly graces that may be com- passed within stone’s throw of a man’s door. We do not measure an artist by the width of his canvas. The panoramas that take in mountains are well, if the life and the mists of the mountains are in them; but they do not blind us to the merit of a cabinet gem. LAYING OUT OF GROUNDS. 167 I question very much if that subtle apprehension of the finer beauties which may be made to appear about a given locality does not express itself more pointedly and winningly in the management of a three or five acre lawn, than upon such reach of meadow and upland as bounds the view. The watchful care for a single hoary boulder that lifts its seared and lichened hulk out of a sweet level of greensward; the auda- cious protection of some wild vine flinging its tendrils carelessly over a bit of wall, girt with a savage hedge-growth—these are indications of an artist feel- ing that will be riotous of its wealth upon a bare acre of ground. Nay, I do not know but I have seen about a laborer’s cottage of Devonshire such adroit adjustment of a few flowering plants upon a window- shelf, and such tender and judicious care for the little matlet of turf around which the gravel path swept to his door, as showed as keen an artistic sense of the beauties of nature, and of the way in which they may be enchained for human gratification, as could be set forth in a park of a thousand acres. Of course, I do not mean to imply that the man who could fill a peasant’s rood of ground with charms of shrub or flower, would, by virtue of so humble attainment, be competent to produce the larger effects of landscape gardening. This would, of course, involve a wider knowledge and a different order of experience ; but 168 RURAL STUDIES. the eye and the taste, which are the final judges, must be much the same. Farm Landscape. N further reference to the possible connection of landscape art with lands submitted every year to agricultural and economic uses, I propose to examine the matter in detail. If all farm-lands showed only the method of Alderman Mechi’s, and his system of pumping dirty water by steam into the middle of any field—to be distributed thence by hose and sprinklers—should prevail, we should have, of course, only flat surfaces and rectangular fields to deal with. But it is safe to say that it will not prevail upon most of our American farms for many years to come; yet it is none the less true that farm-lands are chiefly valued for the crops they will carry, and for the annual return they will make. Are lands under such rule of management susceptible of an esthetic goy- ernance as well? Will treatment with a view to profit, discard of necessity all consideration of taste- ful arrangement? I think not, and for reasons among which I may adduce the following: Judicious location of a farm-steading, with a view to profit simply, will be always near the centre of the lands farmed: this is agreeable, moreover, to every land- LAYING OUT OF GROUNDS. 169 seape-ruling in the matter. The ricks, the chimney, the barn-roofs, the dove-cots, the door-yard, with its skirting array of shrubbery and shade trees,—if only order and neatness belong to them, as good economy would dictate,—form a charming nucleus for any stretch of fields. If there be a stream whose power for mechanical purposes can be made available, economy dictates a location of the farm buildings near to its banks: taste does the same. If there be a hill whose sheltering slope will offer a warm lee from the north- westers, a due regard for the comfort of laborers and of beasts, to say nothing of early garden crops, ‘will dictate the occupancy of such sheltered position by the group of farm buildings: taste will do the same. If such slope has its rocky fastness, incapable of tillage, and of little value for pasture, economy will suggest that it be allowed to develop its own wanton wild growth of forest: a just landscape taste will suggest the same. If there bea broad stretch of meadow or of marsh land, subject to occasional over- flow, or by the necessity of its position not capable of thorough drainage, good farming will demand that it be kept in grass: good landscape gardening will do the same. Again, such rolling hillsides as belong to most farms of the East, and which by reason of their declivity or impracticable nature are not readily sub- 8 170 RURAL STUDIES. ject to any course of tillage, will be kept in pasture, and will have their little modicum of shade. The good farmer will be desirous of establishing this shade around the brooklet or the spring which waters his herd, or as a sheltering belt to the northward and westward of his lands: the landscapist cannot surely object to this. The same shelter along the wayside is agreeable to all zesthetic laws, and does not surely militate against any of the economies of farming. Indeed, I may remark here, as I have already done in the progress of these pages, that the value of a shel- tering belt of trees is not sufficiently appreciated as_ yet by practical farmers; but those who are not insensible to the quick spring growth under the lee of a northern garden-fence, will one day learn that an evergreen belt along the northern line of their farms will show as decisive a gain in their fields or their orcharding. Again, in the disposition of roadways, there is no rule in landscape gardening which is not applicable to a farm. Declivities are to be overcome by the easiest practicable grades, and the curves which will insure this in most landscapes are those which are justified at a glance by the economic eye, as well as by the eye of taste. A straight walk up and down a hill, is a monstrosity in park scenery; and it is a monstrosity that cannot be found in pasture-lands, LAYING OUT OF GROUNDS. eal where cattle beat their own paths. Even sheep, who are good climbers in search of food, whenever they wend their way to the fold, take the declivities by zigzag, and give us a lesson in landscape art. An ox-team, in worming its way through woodland and down successive slopes, will describe curves which would not vary greatly from the engineering laws of adjustment. Once more, there are certain special features about a farm-steading, which may be led to contribute largely to landscape effect without violation of econo- mic law. These are the ventilators upon the barn roof (which no good barn should be without), the dove-cots, the chimney-stacks, the ricks (for which a nice thatch is an economy), the Dutch barns, with their pointed roofs and rustic base, the windmill (if one is dependent upon pumps), the orcharding—all which may be made to contribute their quota to an effective landscape, without great violation of the practical aims of the farmer. I have dwelt upon this point, because I love to believe and to teach that in these respects true taste and true economy are accordant, and that the graces of life, as well as the profits, may be kept in view by every ruralist, whether farmer or amateur. There have been certain fermes ornées both in England and France (may be in this country too), which I do not 172 RURAL STUDIES. at all reckon in my estimate of the relations of good farming to the positive laws of taste. They are play- farms, upon which it is thought necessary, (however flat the surface,) to give to the fields all manner of irregular and curvilinear shapes. Such an arrange- ment is to every judicious farmer an affront. If a field takes irregular shape for sufficient reason—in its surface, or encroachment of cliff, border territory, or water,—well and good; the farmer can account for it, and accommodate his labors to it. But if it bea fantasy merely, which requires him to back his team and give inequality to his “lands,” his common-sense revolts at it; he sees an empty device that interrupts his labor and provokes his contempt. The contempt, I think, any man of true taste will share with him. There is nothing horrible in a straight line (what- ever some gardeners may think) upon flat surfaces. I am inclined, indeed, to favor strongly the old Dutch instinct for long clipped avenues, and for the straight belts of trees along their water-courses, in Holland. Why should they puzzle themselves with curves, where no curves were needed? Or over the great sheep plains of Central France, what mockery it would have been to conduct a highway (or any other way for convenience) by the meanderings which belong so naturally to a highway of Devonshire! Of course, I speak of landscape here in a large LAYING OUT OF GROUNDS. 173 way. A man may very properly have his door-yard and garden curvatures upon a plane surface, if they be accounted for by judicious planting. I have even seen little hillocks thrown up upon a two-acre patch of adroitly arranged pleasure-ground which suggested agreeably larger and more graceful hillocks near by that were not attainable. But a man who should undertake the building of a considerable hill in. a level country to relieve the monotony, would very likely have his labor for his pains. Even the great tumulus upon the field of Waterloo, upon which the Belgian lion snuffs the air, had to me always a most absurd look of impropriety. A group of white head- stones or a column of marble would have told more gracefully the story of the Belgian dead. The stu- pendous rock-work at Chatsworth, again, always ap- peared to me a most monstrous waste of good honest material and honest labor. It is very costly and expensive ; but one of the least of God’s cliffs would overshadow it utterly. Its artificiality cannot cheat one who knows what rocks are in the fissures of the hills; and he looks upon it, at best, with the same sort of foolish wonderment with which he looks upon the wooden puppets in the Dutch gardens of Broek. Thus much I have written to show, so far as I might, that the small landholder can avail himself of the laws of the best landscape art, and in virtue 174 RURAL STUDIES. of them can confirm and establish the neatness and order of his fields. There is, indeed, an artificiality about his straight lines of crops, and bis rectangular enclosures which does not tempt the painter; but it is an artificiality that excuses itself. There 1s a fitness and propriety in it, which, when contrasted, as it may be, with the farmer’s clumps of pasture shade, his wayside trees, and his leafy screen of the farm buildings, is not without a certain charm. Lands not Farmed. HERE is, however, a higher grade of landscape beauty than can belong to lands tilled for their economic returns, just as there is a higher grade of man than the agricultural laborer. I propose to indicate some of the methods by which this higher beauty may be made to declare itself. First of all, in the immediate neighborhood of every country home- stead, (the site and architecture being already deter- mined on, and not, therefore, subject to present dis- cussion,) there must be neatness and order; no tangled weedy growth, no paths half matted over: there must be abundant evidence of that presiding © and watchful care without which every homestead, whether within or without, lacks its most considera- ble charm. If the beauty of the remoter landscape LAYING OUT OF GROUNDS. 175 lie in its wild and unkempt condition, the contrast of extreme care at the house-side with such savagery, will be all the more engaging. And if the beauty of the outer landscapes lie merely in graceful and undu- lating forms, care around the doorstep will be requi- site to mark definitely the outflow of the domestic wants and influences. The path I tread ten times a day should be smooth; the patch of croquet ground should be reduced to absolute level, and any intrud- ing tussock be shorn away from reach of the tender- footed gamesters; but the walk along the further hill-side, where I go only after a long reach of days, may be only a tramped foot-path on the sward ; and the stretch of turf-land where the Alderneys are feed- ing may have its eyelets of dandelion and golden buttercups. But the care and order of which I speak should not be a finical nicety. Martinetism is odious everywhere. It must be acare that shall conceal itself—that shall be marked by the lack of every- thing disagreeable, and not be cognizable by traces of a recent broom or roller. The scar of a spade-cut is an unpleasant reminder of the art which is best when all traces of its mechanical devices are out of sight. Of course, there must be clippings and _ roll- ings, but they should be so deftly done, and with such watchfulness, as regards season, as to make the observer forget they had ever been used. 176 RURAL STUDIES. Again, it comes within the domain of landscape art to secure an agreeable lookout from the door and the cherished windows of the country homestead, whatever may be its situation. Accident or choice of site may, indeed, secure this beyond question ; but, site being established, where views are limited or obnoxious objects fret the eye, it is surprising what may be done by judicious planting, and the re-adjustment of walls or fencing or hedging, to offer the pleasant lookout we demand, though it be bound- ed by a gunshot. With a reach of twenty rods before one’s eye and in one’s keeping, there is no possible excuse for not giving it charming objects to rest upon—objects that will not pall, but grow upon the affections of every true lover of the country. Your neighbor’s slatternly barn troubles you— plant it out; the toss of the tops of hemlocks will not be odious. A wavy bald wall irritates you; if needed as a barrier, cover it with wild vines, or flank it with hedging, or so plant your coppices on either side, in and out, that its line shall be indistinguish- able. Is there a low bit of sedgy ground that can be made nothing of, for the reason that the adjoining proprietor (who holds the lower lands) will enter into none of your schemes of drainage? Plant it with rhododendrons and the red-berried alder ; or if it be a mere morass, tumble into it a few of the LAYING OUT OF GROUNDS. ker mossy stones from the higher slopes, and equip it with the wood-ferns or clematis. There is no spot, indeed, so ungainly that it cannot be cheated of its roughness by such appliances of bush and vine and plant as our own woods will furnish; no stretch of lawn so meagre that you may not throw across it morning and afternoon, such splintered bars of light and shadow from its encompassing trees as will charm the looker-on. In all places of limited range, and which, from the necessities of position, are with- out wide-reaching views, it is doubtful if the eye should be allowed to rest upon any very determinate and defined barrier, as marking the extreme limit of the grounds. An irregular belt of wood or lesser growth of shrubbery will offer pleasant concealment and take away the sharpness of limitation, while some picturesque feature in a neighbor’s grounds beyond, though it be only a dove-cot or the ventilator upon the barn-roof, or a gardener’s cottage, may, by the vagueness and indeterminate character of the inter- vening barrier, become more surely yours by the pos- session of the eye. It is specially the province of the art we are considering, to avail itself of all within reach of the view, whatever may lie between, and make it contribute to the oneness of the home pic- ture. True art does not inquire who made the pig- ments, or whose name they bear, but only, will they 8* 178 RURAL STUDIES. add to the effect of the work in hand? If, by cut- ting a few trees from the copse upon the hillside, I can bring my neighbor’s broad-armed windmill into view, I am taking a very legitimate means of availing myself of his expenditure; and if the usual anchor- age-ground for my neighbor’s yacht is shut off only by a tuft of shrubbery upon my lawn, I will cut it away and enjoy his yacht (at anchorage) as much as he. There are many country places which from their position, possess an outlook so broad and grand as to demand no consideration of special views, and where landscape art will find range not only in the ordering of lesser details, but in partial concealment of the beauties that confront the eye. The situations to which I allude are upon such range of highland as to offer—very likely from the adjoining public road—a similar width of view; but the bouse-view must have some special consecration of its own—some veil of intervening foliage may be, through which the ravish- ing distance shall come by glimpses; some embower- ment of trees, under which, as in a rural framing, the great picture of the rivers and the mountains shall take new sightliness ; some tortuous walk through im- penetrable shrubberies, from the midst of whose dim- ness you shall suddenly burst out upon the glory of the far landscape. Such devices are needful not only LAYING OUT OF GROUNDS. 179 to qualify the monotony of one unvarying scene, be- wildering from its very extent—not only to distinguish the home view from that of every plodder along the highway, but furthermore, and chiefly, to show such traces of art management as shall quicken the zest with which the natural beauties, as successively un- folded, are enjoyed. A great scene of mountains, or river, or sea, or plain, is indeed always a great scene ; but in the presence of it a country home is not neces- sarily a beautiful home. To this end, the art that deals with landscape effect must wed the home to the view ; must drape the bride, and teach us the piquant value of a “ coy, reluctant, amorous delay.” Again, it should be a cardinal rule in landscape art (as in all other art, I think) not to multiply means for producing a given effect. Where one stroke of the brush is enough, two evidence weakness, and three incompetency. If you can secure a graceful sweep to your approach-road by one curve, two are an impertmence. If a clump of half a dozen trees will effect the needed diversion of the eye and pro- duce the desired shade, any additions are worse than needless. If some old lichened rock upon your lawn is grateful to the view, do not weaken the effect by multiplying rocks. Simple effects are the purest and best effects as well in landscape art as in moral teaching. 180 RURAL STUDIES, A single outlying boulder will often illustrate by contrast the smoothness of a lawn better than the marks of a ponderous roller. One or two clumps of alders along the side of a brooklet will designate its course more effectively and pleasantly than if you were to plant either bank with willows. A single spiral tree in a coppice will be enough to bring out all the beauty of a hundred round-topped ones. Be- cause some simple rustic gate has a charming effect at one point of your grounds, do not for that reason repeat it in another. Because the Virginia creeper makes a beautiful autumn show, clambering into the tops of one of your tall cedars with its fivelobed crimson leaflets, do not therefore plant it at the foot ot all your cedars. Because at some special point the red rooflet of a gateway lights up charmingly the green of your lawn, and fastens the eye of visitors, do not for that reason make all your gateways with red rooflets. If some far-away spire of a country church comes through some forest vista to your eye, do not perplex yourself by cutting forest pathways to other spires. Again, (and I think I have trenched upon this topic previously in the course of these pages,) every pos- sessor and improver of a country estate, however small or however large, should work upon clearly defined plans, decided upon from the beginning. I LAYING OUT OF GROUNDS. 181 do not mean to say that diagrams and surveyor’s maps may be positively necessary, provided the director of the improvements has a clear wnderstand- ing of the boundaries and surface, and a clear under- standing of the effects he wishes to accomplish. I only insist that promiscuous planting, and the laying down of paths, little by little, or year by year, with- out reference, clear and constant, to the final results, and to a plan that shall embrace the whole property, will involve great waste of labor, and the inevitable undoing in the future of what may be done to-day. Of course, where such work is intrusted to a corps of gardeners and laborers, complete diagrams will be necessary ; and it is only where the constant personal supervision of the director, whether proprietor or other, can be counted on, that such detailed exhibit of the work in hand can be dispensed with. No general plan, such as I refer to, can be safely matured without, first, full and intimate knowledge of the ground and its environs, and, second, a clear under- standing of the intentions and tastes of the proprietor under whose occupancy the plan is to reach fulfil- ment. I do not at all mean to say that the laws of taste in respect to landscape art are to meet revision at the will of any chance proprietor, or that the art itself has not its elemental principles which no occu- 182 RURAL STUDIES. pant of a country estate can safely disturb. But one landholder has a penchant for agriculture, and wishes to make all the available acres contribute to his taste for cattle or crops; another has a horticultural mania, - and wishes the outlay to take such a shape as shall most contribute to his special pursuit ; still another foresees a demand for his acres as villa sites, and desires such arrangement as shall best contribute to their conversion into some half-dozen or more of attractive homesteads ; and yet another wishes such improvement as shall best develop the natural features of the place, and insure the most economic treatment of the same, without any view to future sale, or to” whims, whether horticultural or agricultural. Now it is strictly within the province of land- scape art to meet either or all of these views without violation of its elemental principles. I have already intimated how far the offices of husbandman and his methods of culture may be subordinated to good landscape effect: of horticulture this is even more true. In laying out with a view to ultimate division of country property for villa sites, there are certain difficulties in the way. In a general sense, it is true that the more you make beautiful a country property, the more you make it inviting for country residences. But landscape design with a view to a single owner- ship and a single home establishment must needs be LAYING OUT OF GROUNDS. 183 different from one which looks to the dispersion of the property into a dozen lesser homes. Absolute unity of plan will, in such a case, be naturally out of the ques- tion. There must be some measure of sacrifice to the contingencies reckoned upon ; no sacrifice of charm, indeed, when the purpose is understood: six adjoin- ing sites, well ordered, and planted with a view to future occupancy, may embrace a thousand beauties, but will not, of course, preserve that unity of effect which would belong to a single permanent property. need to compare notes with the pro- a property ; Ry he suoul! be put in he + a reservation for eae purposes, for vineyard, for orcharding, more than will be essential to his household supply ? Does he count upon subse- quent division of the property for building purposes ? These questions should meet full discussion and the outlay be adjusted thereby. But it is unfortu- nately true that half the owners of country estates entertain no considerations of this kind, and, entering upon their improvements with a vague improvidence, find after a lapse of years, the bulk of them useless and inconvertible. City improvements may be under- taken without long look into the future ; errors may be amended as fast as brick and mortar can be piled 184 RURAL STUDIES. together ; but great trees do not grow in a night, or ina year. In America, we must count upon divisions and subdivisions of property. Great ancestral estates will nowhere be long ancestral. Our republican mill grinds them sharply. Hence we lack, and must always lack that artistic dealing with country estates which can count upon oneness of proprietorship for an indefinite period of years. Better to admit this in the beginning, and let our landscape art take its form accordingly, than to weary itself with imitation of what is feudally and mercilessly old. Nothing can cheat us, indeed, of the beauty of God’s trees and flowers and wood-paths. Nature is as much to the occupant of a fifty-acre holding, as to the Duke of Devonshire, or the Marquis of Buccleugh. But half a thousand acres of sylvan glade and of velvety turf cannot be maintained with us from generation to generation as the feeding ground for fallow deer ; it may, however, have such keeping and embellishment as shall fit it for a score of fair homes. Better the homes with cheerfulness in them than the deer-park with want shivering beyond the walls. City and Town Parks. NHE office of a park is wholly different from that of a village green; the same demands do not LAYING OUT OF GROUNDS. 185 suggest the two. The city square or plaza is the city representative of the village common: this latter being only a rural plaza whereon the green-sward is a more economic and appropriate pavement than stones ; the incessant traffic and wear of a metropolis do not blot the grass. The park represents not only a demand for space and trees, but a revival and reassertion of country instincts which city associations are only too apt to infold and entomb; but, however drearily infolded, there comes some day to all denizens of cities a resur- rection of those earlier rural instincts which crave an outburst, through all the stony growth and food interstices of pavement, of the love of trees and green things. Not until a city has become so large as to deny to very many living in its interior intimate association and familiarity with the encompassing - belt of country will this new need declare itself strongly. Nay, in a city, whose elevated situation, gives outlook from its open spaces upon great fields of greenness around it, such need of park land will not for a long period of years be felt. Eventually, not only will the instinctive rural longings of the masses stimulate to this struggle to recover the lost birthright of trees and turf, but the very vanities of city growth will demand a larger airing than populous streets can supply; and the man 186 RURAL STUDIES. who loves a sleek team, and indulges in its display, will vie with the workman (who wants romping place for his children) in clamor for a public park. If our vanities and our healthful tastes were always as closely yoked, we should have a better erowth from the yoking. However, it may come about— whether from the natural impulses of a crowded population to ally themselves once again with the bounteous amplitude of the fields, or whether from the artificial desire to give room and exhibition to equipages—it is undeniable that all towns of ambi- tious pretensions and of assured and rapid growth do, after a certain period of street packing, bestir them- selves in a feverish way to secure some easy lounging- place under the trees. Unfortunately the stir is, for the most part, at so late a day, that all available or - desirable localities have been secured for other pur- poses. But, whatever the alternative of cost, I can- not learn that such an enterprise, when thoroughly matured and in complete operation, has ever proved a disappointment. I have never heard of a disposition on the part of voters to rescind any appropriation for such a purpose, and to convert a public garden or park to economic uses. I never heard of an instance where pride did not speedily attach to the public grounds, if accessivle and well cared for, and where the people of such a town did not make a boast and a glory of the endowment. LAYING OUT OF GROUNDS. 187 Even in countries where such far-sighted improve- ments are effected by the force majeure of an Imperial edict, popular resentments or revolutions never find their leverage in such tokens of extravagance. There are not a thousand men in Paris, rich or poor, who would make quarrel with Louis Napoleon for the millions lavished upon the Bois de Boulogne, or the appointments of the Park Monceau. But there were tens of thousands of malcontents, in Louis Philippe’s time, with the fortification bill, and the inclosure for private uses, of a terrace of the garden of the Tuil- leries. The people may not, indeed, have a very clear sense of their wants in the matter of a public park, but once supply them attractively and accessibly, and they feel the appositeness of the supply, and cling to it with as much obstinacy as pride. We Americans have a way of shrinking from pro- spective taxation, whatever the purpose of it may be ; but when once fairly saddled with it, whether for the benefit of corporations or monopolies or public im- provements, we bear it with a most admirable un- flinchingness. The costs of public gardens or parks, if well ordered, and not made the vehicle of private peculation, are not such as. would create a remon- strance from the people of any American city; and the difficulty in the way of establishment would lie not so much in a general spirit of hostility to 188 RURAL STUDIES. increased taxation, (though that spirit, as I have hinted, has a wonderful eatlike watchfulness,) as in the private jealousies that must be harmonized before any large real estate improvement is practicable. I defy any benevolent gentleman, in a town of thirty thousand active, and newspaper-reading inhabitants, to propose a scheme for a public garden or park, upon a designated spot of ground, without starting an angry buzz of opposition from other equally benevo- lent gentlemen, who see in it only a device to bring about the rapid appreciation of property which is not their own. The quick-sightedness with which the philanthropists of one side of a smallish city will detect flaws in the philanthropy of men living on the other side of a smallish city, is indeed something marvellous. Thus it happens that some brave and honest project for park or water supply, or sewerage, will welter for years in some slough of opposing doubts, all whose obstructing slime is made up of such miserable, local jealousies as I have hinted at. The same traces of satanic influence belong, I think, to the philosophers who make up our national Congress, so that our best bits of legislation seem to come upon us by ac- cident, when our wisest legislators are asleep, or tired, or—worse, In the days of our present civilization and educa- tion, it is hardly to be doubted that the majority of LAYING OUT OF GROUNDS. 189 intelligent voters in any considerable town would declare for the utility of a public park or garden ; but whether their wishes can be made effective for the establishment of such a result is another ques- tion, and one which must drift into the arena of town politics—where I leave it; proposing only to discuss here some of the aims of such an endowment, some of the possibilities in that direction, the conditions of its success, and permanent usefulness to the masses. Place for Parks. IRST of all, a public park should be as near as possible to the town ; best of all, perhaps, if in the very centre of the town, or, as in the case of some of the old walled towns of Europe, girting it with a circle of green. I hardly think any public gardens of the world contribute more to the health and enjoy- ment of the adjacent population than those of Frank- fort-on-the-Main, which lie all about their homes, and which are planted upon the line of the old fortifica- tions. Even the ill-kept walks upon the ancient walls of Chester and York (in England), by their nearness to the homes of the people, and by the delightful out- look they offer, are among the most cherished prome- nades I know. But with us, who have no girting 190 RURAL STUDIES. walls, and rarely vacant spaces about our commercial centres, these pleasant breathing-places must be pushed into the outskirts of our towns. I say—rarely vacant spaces; but while I write, there occur to me instances of beautiful opportunities neglected, one of which, at least, I will record. The thriving little city of Norwich, in eastern Connecticut, is situated at the confluence of two rivers, which form the Thames. Along either shore of the Yantic and the Shetucket, the houses of the town are picturesquely strewed in patches of white and gray; but between the rivers and the lines of houses, the land rises into a great promontory of hill—toward the east, forming a Sal- vator-Rosa cliff, shaggy with brush-wood and cedars— toward the south and west, a steep declivity on which the swiftly slanting sward-land is spotted with out- cropping ledges; to the north a gradual slope falls easily away to the great plains, where lie the bulk of the suburban residences. Within twenty or thirty years the whole upper surface of this central hillock might have been secured for the merest bagatelle, and would have made one of the proudest public prome- nades imaginable, accessible to all walkers from the south and east, and to all equipages from the north, and offering level plateau for drives that would have commanded the most enchanting of views; but the occasion has gone by; inferior houses hold their LAYING OUT OF GROUNDS. 191 uneasy footing on the hillside, and a gaunt-jail, which is the very apotheosis of ugliness, crowns this picturesque height. Another little city, that of Hartford, in the neigh- bor State of Connecticut, has made the most of its opportunities by converting into a charming public garden a weary waste of ground that lay between its railway station and the heart of the city. The op- portunity was not large, to be sure, but it was one that needed a keen eye for its development, and the result has shown that commercial thrift may not unfrequently take its lesson with profit from the sug- gestions of a cultivated taste. There is many a growing town having somewhere within its borders such unsuspected aptitude and capability, that only needs an eye to discern it, and the requisite enterprise to develop in the very heart of the population a garden and a public promenade that would become a joy forever. It must be remembered, furthermore, that it is quite impossible to make such transmutation of waste and unsightly places into an attractive area of garden-land, without increasing enormously the taxable value of all surrounding property. I recall now, in one of our most thriving seaside cities, a great slough of oozy tide-mud of many acres in extent, shut off from the harbor front by a low rail- way embankment, showing here and there a riotous 192 RURAL STUDIES. overgrowth of wild sedges, foul with heaps of garbage, uninviting in every possible way, and yet lying within stone’s throw of the centre of the city. Sandy highlands, almost totally unimproved, flank it immediately upon the west—disposed there, as it would seem, for the very purpose of furnishing easy material for the fillmg in of the flat below. A few thousands would accomplish this, and judicious plant- ing and outlay would in three years’ time establish a charming promenade or garden in the centre of the sea-front of the town, and there is not one of the adjoining pieces of property but would be doubled in value by the operation. The neglect of such oppor- tunities, whether due to miserable local jealousies, or, as often happens, to the short-sightedness and indif- ference of municipal authorities, is surely not compli- mentary to our civilization. The term “ near to town,” in these times of horse railways, has rather a relative than positive signifi- cance. Three miles, by a fair, broad avenue, upon which well-equipped cars are making their rounds every half hour of the day, is not half so large a distance for either the laboring or the business man to compute, as a mile and a half of ill-kept, old- fashioned turnpike road. The truth is, that citizens of sleepy towns in the interior are losing their reckoning about distances ; LAYING OUT OF GROUNDS. 193 they have not been educated to metropolitan esti- mates. The Wall Street man sneers at two miles of walk before business ; your small broker of a country city, on the other hand, advertises for a tenement “within half a mile of the post-office.” I never see such an advertisement but I think some Rip Van Winkle has just waked, and that his friends should give him a combing and nursing. Ready accessibility is the true measure of distance in our day, and a town park must be easily accessible to all classes. It must be a matter in which the humblest citizens can take pride and comfort. Those cities which have considerable open spaces in the shape of “common,” “ green,” or “squares,” scattered here and there, are the last to wake to any need of a park which shall give drives, and such sources of diversion as belong legitimately to a public park. The central commons and greens may do very well in the early stages of a city’s growth, but there comes a time when the municipal edicts forbid ball-playing and cricket, at which date there is reason to plan some larger forage ground for our youthfal sports. And it is precisely this forage ground for the developing muscle of Young America that the town park should furnish. Cricket ground, base-ball ground, and parade ground for the ambitious troops of the municipality should be as sedulously cared for 9 194 RURAL STUDIES. as a good roadway for carriages. A skating pond would belong fitly to the requirements, and, if no river or harbor offered better space, an opportunity for boating would be wisely included. It is not supposed that a feasible spot of ground in the neigh- borhood of most cities can command and make good these requirements. But much more can be done than is imagined if the best available talent is secured for the work in hand. Even in our fast days, it is quite wonderful to find what a multitude of people go to sleep upon advantages which, judiciously ordered, would make them rich. There is many a river valley, in the close neighborhood of cities, covered now with rank and unprofitable grasses, over which, at small cost, might be given flow to a lake that would wash on either shore the banks of high- lands, admirably fitted for drives, and already clothed with the forest growth of half a century. Equipment of Public Gardens. S I have already said, it is requisite that a town park should offer a charming drive; so far charming that every townsman will feel it incum- bent on him to give each stranger guest a full view of its attractions. These latter must lie, either in commanding views of the town itself and its environs, LAYING OUT OF GROUNDS. 195 or in landscape effects which have been wrought out by skill and attention in the park itself. Neither Hyde Park nor the Bois de Boulogne offer any com- manding range of view; the delights all lie in the neatly kept roadway, the flanking lakes and parterres, the bright, green slopes of shaven turf; at Richmond Hill or on the Pincian at Rome, on the other hand, you forget the roadway, you forget the bits of pretty turflet, you ignore the copses, you are careless of the odor of flowers, for your eye, carrying all your per- ceptive faculties in its reach, leaps to the fair vision of flood and field and trees, which sweep away, in sun and in shadow, to the horizon. Undoubtedly if the surface of adjoining country will permit, it will be far less expensive to establish a park whose charm shall lie in exterior views than one whose attractions shall consist in what the pro- fessional men call (by use of an abominable word) its gardenesque features. Yet, with such economic pur- pose, it will never do to go too far in the country. It must never be forgotten with us that the men of equipages are by no means the only class who are to participate in our eesthetical progress ; the town park, to have its best uses, must not only be within easy reach by walk or by the street tramway, but it must have, too, its spaces of level ground to allure the cricket or the base-ball players. Areas should be 196 RURAL STUDIES. ample enough to prevent the possible interference of these sports, (which every sensible township would do well to encourage,) with the enjoyment of a quiet drive. While there is no need for making the wood of a public park a complete arboretum, I think that special care should be taken to give specimens of all the best known timber and shade trees, and that these should be definitely marked with their botanical as well as popular names, so that strollers might come to a pleasant lesson in their seasons of idleness. The particular habits of individual specimens and of forest growths might, I think, be safely and profitably noted as lending additional interest to them, and creating a sort of fellowship with the trees. Every forester knows that oaks and maples of the same species have yet idiosyncrasies of their own—one blooming a full fortnight before its neighbor, and another taking a tawny hue, while its companion is still in full array of green. In the garden of the Tuilleries there is a chestnut which enjoys the tradi- tional repute of showing leaflets upon the twentieth of March (hence called Vingt de Mars), and the vener- able,old tree, well known to every frequenter of the garden, has come to have a character of sanctity by reason of this early welcome of the spring. In a field within sight of my own door, there is a sugar-maple LAYING OUT OF GROUNDS. 197 which, by some fault in the planting, or some inherent defect in the tree, has made little or no growth these last six years, and which every August—a full month before the earliest of its companions—takes on a hectic flush of color, which it carries, with the buoy- ancy of a consumptive, all through the autumn. This accident of coloring gives an individuality and in- terest to the tree which distinguishes it from all its stalwart and thrifty fellows. I do not think a town park can ever safely be mated with a trotting course; either the trotting or the park will go under. It is not intended to speak against trotting-courses, or greased pigs, or the climb- ing of greased poles; but the arena for these sports is not usually such a one as to entice a quiet family man toa park drive. Quiet family men are not, to be sure, very plentiful, and are not much considered nowadays; they still subsist, however, in sufficient numbers to give astale flavor of respectability to many of our growing provincial towns, and to shape, to a certain degree, the municipal improvments. The love for fast trotters and for trotting matches is so decided an American taste that a good trotting-course will become a cherished institution in every town of a dozen or fifteen thousand inhabitants. Indeed, I think its establishment may be regarded as a kind of necessary safety-valve, through which unusual speed 198 RURAL STUDIES. and the accompanying howls may be worked off safely without frightening staid old gentlemen who keep to the quiet high-roads. A good flat, a good bottom, and a good amphitheatre of seats, are about all the requisites of an approved trotting-course, and anything picturesque in the way of trees or decora- tive features is an impertinence. There is no fear, therefore, that the trotting taste will ever have large interference with the demand for public parks. It is a common mistake, I think, to imagine that anything like a finical nicety in the arrangement of turf or walks or parterres is essential to the perma- nent and larger utilities of a town park. This, in- deed, involves great cost, and diverts from larger and more important ends. 280 RURAL STUDIES. The enclosure A, having a ledge and an old group of forest trees in its northwestern angle (offering admirable shelter), may have its picturesquely dis- posed orcharding, or may be planted with ornamental trees, as the proprietor may fancy. In either case, with a few protective 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 culti- vation, and no grass permitted within reach of its most divergent rootlets. The walks and entrance drive explain themselves. 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 when these were removed, the view was sadly interfered with by the mossy wall already spoken of. To obviate this difficulty I suggested 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. “7 E 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 accomplished grazier could desire; but the old house becomes at last a weariness. Not because it is old; nor yet because it is comparatively 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 front- age 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. MR. URBAN AND A COUNTRY HOUSE. 287 “T am tired of the gloom of north exposures,” he writes ; “ wood-fires are very well, 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 din- ing-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 problem be solved ? ‘“‘T don’t care for shape, if it be only picturesque, and meet the wants I have named above. 2 j . _ | Baete'g sco § ‘ Spa bre , 4 - . oft = ? vi “4 ' ef - 4, i. | s * Ae a) : ” ain 4) as oe Otahee! toqtint \ee my debin, cet. G09 2 a] : at eae rs a 7 iy i iy A ie 1 a iP? ma 7 - a) i yal i n ‘ aH ‘afl mi: i git eeeae - 7 Ted =o Sef j : hi i 7 ° =) at ‘i a nh. ifs 7 ' | aay 3 - ‘ ™ - a 2 re | fi x - i - vy = Nils } J a { 4s) 7 = = Hi , 1 - a ws ; : 2 jos ' - ae! a ¥ , sa - 4 t ’ a jet ir if i San Da a ii a - 7 1 - on VW a } _ ¢ . : Bt ane a | . : ay 7 ee ded 1 ie (ei as - wr . i “ja5 y 7 eels] if — : "oe ad i . - 9 — = him a rr 4 1i> WS bai a e 5 ¢ “ = 7 : 7 i conduct of Landscape Gardening, and its connected branches of business — including Rural Architecture and Engineering, with the Agricultural, Horticultural, and Sanitary treatment of public and private grounds. They will furnish designs for the laying out of Parks, Ceme- teries, Farms, Country Seats, and Village Homesteads. They will also plan modifications of country houses and of old-established gardens or farms, and devise whatever, in their view, may be needful—by plantations, thinning of wood, re-adjustment of build- ings or enclosures, drainage, and establishment of walks or drives —for the full development of country property, whether the pro- prietor aims at economic management or picturesque effects, Simple suggestions, surveys, drawings, and specifications, for the above objects, with estimates of cost, will each or all be given, as correspondents may wish. They further propose to give attention to the Selection of Sites, whether for Summer Houses, permanent Rural Residences, or Farms. In this connection, they propose to inaugurate a gen- eral bureau of information in regard to country homes—to advise respecting the desirableness of particular localities—whether on sanitary or economic grounds—and to negotiate transfers of coun- try property. Correspondence is invited from those having such property for disposal ; none, however, will be offered by them, un- less previously visited and examined by a member of the firm, in order that an intelligent opinion can be given of its adaptation to the special wants of a client. Mr. RIcHARD M. Hunr has kindly permitted the association of his name with the firm as advising Architect. DONALD G. MITCHELL, (of New Haven.) WILLIAM H. GRANT, Late Superintending Engineer of Central Park. CITY OFFICE, STUDIO BUILDING, 51 West Tenth St., N. Y., where a member of the firm can be consulted on Saturdays, Mon- days, Tuesdays, and Wednesdays ; or Mr. MITCHELL may be addressed by mail at New Haven, Ct.; Mr. GRANT at Sing Sing, New York. MY FARM OF EDGEWOOD. By DONALD G. MITCHELL. 2 vol. 12mo., on Laid Tinted Paper. Price, $1 75. A new issue now coming from the press for the Spring Trade. ‘The cultivation of the scholarly gentleman shows itself in every page, and asunny geniality of soul throws a softening tint over the ordinarily unpoetical and angular characteristics of agriculture.’—Evening Post. ‘‘The instruction which it embodies will be none the less valued because of the desultory method which the author has followed, or the many di- gressions into which he has been beguiled. By the great mass of readers, these very features will be considered asan additional charm. The light and easy movement of the author's style, the graceful and delicate transi- tions which he makes, the quiet humor in which he so naturally indulges, the sly but good-natured satire which seems to drop so natuyally from his pen, and the unaffected yet chastened pathos into which he rises for a mo- ment, are all exquisitely wrought into a varied and beautiful tissue, which is fitted to give perpetual delight to the cultivated reader, and to be itself an instrument of culture to the unrefined.”—New-Englander. “Tt is a book whose merit can hardly be over-praised. It should be in every farmer’s library, as a volume full of practical advice to aid his daily work, and full of ennobling suggestions to lift his calling into a kind of epic dignity.’—Atlantic Monthly. “Mr, Mitchell has unusual skill in putting his experience, his culture, his taste, his delicate perceptions, into such literary forms as to make them of use to others. This work has the vitality which springs from a love of and acquaintance with nature, and will long be read as oneof the best and pleasantest pictures of a New-England farm, and of the charms and drawbacks of our New-England country life.’—North American Review. BY THE SAME AUTHOR. WET DAYS AT EDGEWOOD, WITH OLD FARMERS, OLD GARDENERS, AND OLD PASTORALS. lvol. 12mo. Price, $1 75. We have no more graceful writer of the English language living than the author of ‘My Farm” and “* Wet Days at Edgewood,” nor has the grace of his pen been more apparent in any of his works than in these two bucolics. In the last we have the fruits of his readings and musings among the authors who have written upon rural life and its occupations, philosophers and poets, from Hesiod and Homer down through the ages, to Charles Lamb, and Loudon, the encyclopedist. A great amount of quaint and pleasing reading is gathered from the thoughts of a hundred writers, and, by the skilful hand of our author, their seeds are cultivated into attractive plants which will beguile many an hour in town or country. The book is divided into nine ‘‘ wet days,’ each one of which has its own attractions. The multitude of Ik Marvel’s readers will join us iu the wish that he may long live to write such pleasant béoks, Copies sert by mail, postpaid, on receipt of price, by CS. & Co, DOCTOR JOHNS: BesnG A NARRATIVE OF CERTAIN EVENTS IN THE LIFE OF A CONGREGA- TIONAL MINISTER OF ConNECTICUT. By DonaLp G. MITCHELL, author of ‘‘ Reveries of a Bachelor,” “ My Farm of Edgewood,” &c., &c. 2vols.12mo. Price, $3 50, “The work affords a rare picture of New England life and manners. It is every way a charming sketch, and must improve the mind and heart of every one who reads it.” —Episcopalian. “The book shows the blended powers of the student, the thinker, the poet, and the humorist, and is read as we read Addison or Goldsmith, with tranquil delight.’— Boston Transcript, ** As a piece of rhetoric, it is charming, of course; for no American writer, since the days of Washington Irving, uses the English language as the ‘Ik Marvel’ of a few years since, and the ‘Farmer of Edgewood’ of to-day.”.—Round Table. ‘Ttis quite evident that, personally, the author has no sympathy with the theological system which ‘ Dr, Johns’ is made to represent, and which is drawn in its hardest and extremest form ; but still his sturdy sense of justice makes him to describe him asa really noble character, of which no school of orthodoxy and no church has need to be ashamed, and one which commanded the profoundest respect and lifelong confidence of the worldly Maverick.”’—Hours at Home. cd ‘* No book of the author seems to us 80 good. The great charm of it lies in the truthfulness of its picture of New England life.’—New Haven Palladium. “Tn one respect Dr. Johus can be spoken of with unalloyed approval ; it is a picture of life and manners that were of a social state that is fast passing away, the mere shadows of which are on the land.”—Boston Traveller. “The doctor is a kind, unworldly man, and the most interesting person in the book ; his life has been shadowed and softened by sorrow, and he learns to love the little Adéle, though she is a Roman Catholic, and by his love converts her to Protestantism. With his rebellions and warm-heart- ed son he has a sadder experience ; the boy, driven from home by his father’s apparent, and his hard old aunt’s real, harshness, drifts about the world, doing nothing bad, but tossed and worn by religious doubts and love for Adéle, till at last he finds rest in perfect reconciliation with his father, the knowledge of Adéle’s love for him and death.”— Daily Spy. “ He has evidently seen, face to face, much of what he describes. His characters stand out clear, distinct, and life-like, with their several fea- tures of worldly wisdom, shrewd common sense, kindly feeling, exuber- ance of spirits, precise manners, and unfeigned piety. In dealing with these the author is quite at home, and his delineations are at once graceful and truthful”"—N Y. Evanczelist. Copies sent by mail, postpaid, on receipt of price, by C. S. & Co. = § 7 7 7 Py Gi = : * ~ - be -* eee se 2S ie = ‘ee -i Ps Senet 4 8 =< 5 ° = oe ~ - . - - 9 Fi & . + auf o> 7 as > - . 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