FARM ECHOES. 11 



such benefit in cruising in her, that when, at the end of 

 the yachting season, I called upon my physician, he was 

 much surprised at the change he saw in me, and asked 

 what I had been doing to produce it. When informed 

 that I had "employed anothec doctor," he was quite 

 taken aback, and in a significant tone of voice asked, 

 " What doctor ?" Upon being informed that it was " Dr. 

 Yacht," he remarked that as the sea was so beneficial to 

 me I had "better follow it as a profession." The ques- 

 tion of yachting was, however, otherwise disposed of, as 

 none of my family could be with me because of their 

 dread of the ocean, and their illness when upon it. 

 Much of my boyhood was spent in boating, and I have 

 always had a fondness for such amusement. If, therefore, 

 my pen occasionally jumps the track, and makes a sud- 

 den dash for old Ocean, the reader must pardon the 

 digression. 



After searching for a summer residence among the hills 

 of New England, I found one a mile east of, and about 

 sixty feet above the village of Litchfield, Connecticut, the 

 natural advantages of which so charmed me that I pur- 

 chased it. Sixty-six acres were far more land than I 

 wanted, as I had not the most remote idea of being inter- 

 ested in farming, but that was the size of the property I 

 then purchased. What to do with the surplus land, and, 

 it may be added surplus rocks, I did not stop to consider. 



Clearing and grading the house grounds, gave me a 

 taste for such work, and I was soon busily superintending 

 it on an enlarged scale. Acres of unproductive land were 

 "subdued," to use a local and expressive term. The 

 contest was, at times, such as made it also a decidedly 



