PARADISE IN THE COUNTRY. 



ed, will cost five dollars a month — a man's 

 labor reckoned at the present usage. Now 

 no person for whom this letter is written, 

 can adbrd to keep more than one man ser- 

 vant for " chores." A hundred yards of 

 gfravel-walk, therefore, employing half his 

 lime, you can easily calculate the distribu- 

 tion of the remainder, upon the flower-gar- 

 den, kitchen garden, wood-shed, stable, and 

 piggery. (The female " help" should milk 

 if I died for it !) My own opinion is, that 

 fifty yards from the road is far enough, and 

 twenty a more prudent distance, thouoh, in 

 the latter case, an impervious screen of 

 shrubbery along your outer fence is indis- 

 pensable. 



The matter of gravel-walks embraces sev- 

 eral points of rural comfort, and, to do 

 without them, you must have no young la- 

 dies in your ac(]naintance, and especially, 

 no 5'oung gentlemen from the cities. It 

 may not have occurred to you ii your side- 

 walk life, that the dew falls in the coimtry 

 with tolerable regularity ; and that, from 

 sundown to ten in the forenoon, you are as 

 much insulated in a cottage surrounded 

 with high grass, as on a rock surrounded 

 wiih forty fathom water, — shod a la mode, 

 I mean. People talk of being " pent up in 

 a cily,"with perhaps twenty miles of flagged 

 sidewalk extending from their door-stone ! 

 They are apt to draw a contrast, favorable 

 to the liberty of cities, however, if they 

 come thinly shod to the country, ^md must 

 either wade in the grass or stumble through 

 the ruts of a dusty road. If you wish to 

 see bodies acted on by an " exhausted re- 

 ceiver," (giving out their " airs" of course,) 

 shut up your young city friends in a coun- 

 try coltao-e, by the compulsion of wet grass 

 and muddy highways. Better gravel your 

 whole farm, you say. But liaving reduced 

 you to this point of horror, you are prepared 

 to listen without contempt, while I suggest 

 two humble succedayiea. 



First : On receiving intimation of a pro- 

 bable visit from a city friend, write by re- 

 turn of post for the size of her foot (or Jiis.) 

 Provide immediately a pair of India-rubber 

 shoes of the corresponding number, and on 

 the morning after your friend's arrival, be 

 ready with them at the first horrified with- 

 drawal of the damp foot from the grass. 



Your shoes may cost you a dollar a pair, 

 but if your visiters are not more than ten or 

 twelve in the season, it is a saving of fifty 

 per cent, at least, in graveling and weeding. 



Or, Second : Enclose the two or three acres 

 immediately about your house with a ring 

 fence, and pasture within it a small flock of 

 sheep. They are clean and picturesque, (your 

 dog should be taught to keep them from the 

 doors and porticoes,) and by feeding down 

 the grass to a continual greensward, they 

 give the dew a chance to dry off early and 

 enlarge your cottage " liberties" to the ex- 

 tent of their browsings. 



I may as well add, by the way, that a 

 W'alk with the sod simply taken oil', is, in 

 this climate, dry enough, except for an hour 

 or two after a heavy rain ; and besides the 

 original saving in gravel, it is kept clean 

 with a quarter of the trouble. A weed im- 

 bedded in stones is a much more obstinate 

 customer than a score of them sliced from 

 the smooth ground. At any rate, out with 

 them ! A neglected walk indicates that 

 w^orst of country diseases, a mind grown 

 slovenly and slip-slop ! Your house may 

 go unpainted, and your dress (with one ex- 

 ception) submit to the course of events — 

 but be scrupulous in the whiteness of your 

 linen, tenacious of the neatness of your 

 gravel-walks ; and, while these points hold, 

 you are at a redeemable remove from the 

 lapse, (fatally prone and easy,) into barba- 

 rianism and misanthropy. 



Before I enter upon the cultivation of 

 grounds, let me lay before the reader my 

 favorite idea of a cottage — not a cottage 

 ornee, but a cottage insoucieuse, if I may 

 coin a phrase. In the valley of Sweet Wa- 

 ters, on the banks of the Barbyses, there 

 stands a small pleasure palace of the sul- 

 tan, which looks as if it was dropped into 

 the creen lap of nature, like a jewel-case on 

 a birth-da}', with neither preparation on the 

 part of the bestower, nor disturbance on the 

 part of the receiver. From the balcony's 

 foot on every side, extends an unbroken sod 

 to the horizon. Gigantic trees shadow the 

 grass here and there, and an enormous mar- 

 ble vase, carved in imitation of a sea-shell, 

 turns the silver Barbyses in a curious cas- 

 cade over its lip ; but else, it is all Nature's 

 iap, Avith its bauble resting in velvet — no 



