STYLE IN FARMING. 63 



has become an unsightly tangle, and soon all the trees will have become so 

 lop-sided that one cannot be removed without laying bare an unsightly side 

 of its neighbor. This is no exaggeration. The most difficult matter to 

 press home to most people, in the way of ornament, is the fact that there 

 should be constant and systematic thinning. It is a mistake to suppose that 

 the surround irgs of a home should be fixed. The universal law of change 

 applies to the private grounds, as well as to the orchard or garden. 



Not long since I visited a worthy farmer who desired my advice in regard 

 to the improvement of his front yard. I looked it over, and advised him to 

 remove a great Norway spruce, a balsam fir, an apple tree, a large chestnut, 

 three smaller Norways, a large red cedar, a fringe tree, and several bushes. 

 He discussed the trees seriatim. The great spruce he could never spare, 

 because it was the first one set in the township; ditto with the fir; the 

 apple tree bore good fruit; the horse-chestnut was the largest specimen in 

 the neighborhood; the three small Norways were thrifty and attractive; the 

 red cedar had been " backed in " in an early day from the wood at a great 

 expense of muscle; the fringe tree cost him a d6llar, and the bushes were all 

 attractive when in flower; therefore he could spare none of them. I could 

 not improve his yard ; and when he must look at the evening sky to note 

 signs of to-morrow's weather, and when his wife must know who it is that is 

 passing along the highway, they must either go some rods away from the 

 house or scrooch under the trees. An attractive house on a distant hill is 

 eniirely hidden; in fact, there is no great outside world from the windows 

 of that residence. 



This is all radically wrong. The landscape gardener is often upbraided 

 for his so-called impractical notions, his ''fine theories of beauty," but 

 woe to the gardener if he ever entertains notions so much at variance with 

 laws of happiness and health, as does he who hibernates in a prison of 

 tangled trees. No, rather have an open field with the fresh verdure of the 

 greensward and the crisp play of winds, and an over-abundance of sunlight, 

 than a house hidden in gloomy foliage. But let us have the golden mean. 

 Keep the front of the house open to the world, and never allow a tree to 

 hide a desirable view. Last spring I moved into a new house. From the 

 front porch I could see nothing but an ordinary grove, although but a few 

 rods beyond it were fine college buildings with their constant play of life 

 and frolic. I cut many trees from that grove, none to its detriment either, 

 and now as I sit at my dinner-table I can see through the grove to an attrac- 

 tive view beyond. This vista may be "impractical" as the common expres- 

 sion goes, but I am confident that I can relish my meal better than I could 

 if I were shut up to my own dining-room and the bit of gravel path which 

 lies in front of my window. 



Now it is singular that these same people who would cling tenaciously to 

 every old tree about the house, would often mercilessly sacrifice every beau- 

 tiful great tree in a distant landscape. Rural landscapes are pre-eminently 

 beautiful when there are drooping elms and rotund maples, dotted here and 

 there over little eminences in pastures, in cornfields, and along highways. 

 He is a reckless tenant who would rob nature of these isolated beauties for 

 the sake of the stove-wood they contain. In rocky New England, where 

 the farmers can not covet every foot of land, the grand old trees are pic- 

 turesque. In our western country it is not always so. It requires some 

 judgment, to be sure, to know when to cut a tree and when to let it alone, 

 but it is judgment, nevertheless, which pays the effort it costs. 



