CITIZENS RETIRING TO THE COUNTRY. 



cannot retire into the country to fold our hands and sit in the sunshine to be idle. 

 Precisely so. But you need not therefore ruin yourselves on a large farm. Do not 

 be ambitious of being great landed proprietors. Assume that you need occupation and 

 interest, and buy a small piece of ground — a few acres only — as feio as you please — but 

 without any regard for profit. Leave that to those who have learned farming in a 

 more practical school. You think, perhaps, that you can find nothing to do on a few 

 acres of ground. But that is the greatest of mistakes. A half a dozen acres, the 

 capacities of which are fully developed, will give you more pleasure than five hundred 

 poorly cultivated. And the advantage for you is, that you can, upon your few acres, 

 spend just as little or just as much as you please. If you wish to be prudent, lay out 

 your little estate in a simple way, with grass and trees, and a few walks, and a single 

 man may then take care of it. If you wish to indulge your taste, you may fill it with 

 shrubberies, and arboretums, and conservatories, and flower gardens, till every tree 

 and plant and fruit in the whole vegetable kingdom, of really superior beauty and in- 

 terest, is in your collection. Or, if you wish to turn a penny, you will find it easier 

 to take up certain fruits or plants and grow them to high perfection, so as to command 

 a profit in the market, than you will to manage the various operations of a large farm. 

 We could point to ten acres of ground from which a larger income has been produced 

 than from any farm of five hundred acres in the country. Gardening, too, offers 

 more variety of interest to a citizen than farming ; its operations are less rude and 

 toilsome, and its pleasures more immediate and refined. Citizens, ignorant of farm- 

 ing, should, therefore, buy small places, rather than large ones, if they wish to con- 

 sult their own true interest and happiness. 



But some of our readers, who have tried the thing, may say that it is a very expen- 

 sive thing to settle oneself and get well established, even on a small place in the coun- 

 try. And so it is, if we proceed upon the fallacy, as we have said, that everything in 

 the coiaitrij is cheap. Labor is dear ; it costs you dearly to day, and it will cost you 

 dearly to-morrow, and the next year. Therefore, in selecting a site for a home in the 

 country, always remember to choose a site where nature has done as much possible for 

 you. Don't say to yourself as many have done before you — "Oh' I want occupa- 

 tion, and I rather like the new place — raw and naked though it may be. / will cre- 

 ate a 'paradise for viyself. I will cut down yonder hill that intercepts the view, I will 

 level and slope more gracefully yonder rude bank, I will terrace this rapid descent, I 

 will make a lake in yonder hollow." Yes, all this you may do for occupation, and find 

 it very delightful occupation too, if you have the income of Mr. Astor. Otherwise, 

 after you have spent thousands in creating your paradise, and chance to go to some friend 

 who has bought all the graceful undulations, and sloping lawns, and sheets of water, 

 natural, ready made — as they may be bought in thousands of purely natural places in 

 America, for a few hundred dollars, it will give you a species of pleasure-ground-dys- 

 pepsia to see how foolishly you have wasted your money. And this, more especially, 

 when you find, as the possessor of the most finished place in America finds, that he has 

 want of occupation, and that far from being fi.nished, he has only begun to elicit 

 best beauty, keeping and completeness of which his place is capable 



