206 Landscape Gardening 



large enough perhaps to attract anybody's attention but 

 his own, but quite large enough to make it certain that he 

 must leave her or be swamped - - and quite large enough 

 to make his voyage a serious piece of business. 



Everything which a citizen does in the country, costs 

 him an incredible sum. In Europe (heaven save the masses), 

 you may have the best of laboring men for twenty or thirty 

 cents a day. Here you must pay them a dollar,* at least 

 our amateur must, though the farmers contrive to get their 

 labor for eight or ten dollars a month and board. The 

 citizen's home once built, he looks upon all heavy expendi- 

 tures as over; but how many hundreds, perhaps thou- 

 sands, has he not paid for out-buildings, for fences, for 

 roads, etc. Cutting down yonder hill, which made an ugly 

 blotch in the view, -- it looked like a trifling task; yet 

 there were $500 swept clean out of his bank account, and 

 there seems almost nothing to show for it. You would not 

 believe now that any hill ever stood there - - or at least 

 that nature had not arranged it all (as you feel she ought 

 to have done), just as you see it. Your favorite cattle and 

 horses have died, and the flock of sheep have been sadly 

 diminished by the dogs, all to be replaced - - and a careful 

 account of the men's time, labor and manure on the grain 

 fields, shows that for some reason that you cannot under- 

 stand, the crop - - which is a fair one, has actually cost you 

 a trifle more than it is worth in a good market. 



To cut a long story short, the larger part of our citizens 

 who retire upon a farm to make it a country residence, are 

 not aware of the fact that capital cannot be profitably 

 employed on land in the Atlantic states without a thor- 

 oughly practical knowledge of farming.^ A close and syste- 



* Think of those exorbitant days, when farm laborers got a dollar 

 for twelve hours' work! -- F. A. W. 



t Mr. Downing, after the fashion of his time, used italics very freely 

 in his essays. Following the taste of our time I have put most of his 

 italics into Roman type; but in this case I have allowed it to stand as he 

 wrote it, sorry only that I cannot underscore his statement further. His 

 observation is just as true and just as important now as it was in 1852. - 

 F. A. W. 



