MY OWN ACRE 



This ravine, the middle one of the grove's 

 three, is about a hundred feet wide. When I 

 first began to venture the human touch in it, it 

 afforded no open spot level enough to hold a 

 camp-stool. From the lawn above to the river 

 road below, the distance is three hundred and 

 thirty feet, and the fall, of fifty-five feet, is 

 mostly at the upper end, which is therefore too 

 steep, as well as too full of varied undergrowth, 

 for any going but climbing. In the next ravine 

 on its left there was a clear, cold spring and in 

 the one on its right ran a natural rivulet that 

 trickled even in August; but this middle ravine 

 was dry or merely moist. 



Here let me say to any who would try an ama- 

 teur landscape art on their own acre at the edge 

 of a growing town, that the town's growth tends 

 steadily to diminish the amount of their land- 

 scape's natural water supply by catching on 

 street pavements and scores and hundreds of 

 roofs, lawns and walks, and carrying away in 

 sewers, the rain and melting snows which for 

 ages filtered slowly through the soil. Small 

 wonder, I think, that, when in the square 

 quarter-mile between my acre and Elm Street 



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