In Memory of Donald G. Mitchell. 



There are men with great minds and great hearts who will 

 not devote their powers to selfish struggle for wealth or 

 fame, but who so love their native land with all its simple, 

 common, every-day men and women, its simple joys of field 

 and woodland, orchard, home and child life that they devote 

 their lives to service of their fellow men. Such a man 

 was Donald G. Mitchell. Years before most of us were 

 born he was esteemed as one of the great writers of 

 America, a man of education, of culture, of wide travel 

 ing, a genius who knew the secrets of the human heart, 

 a poet who interpreted aright the lessons of life and the 

 aspirations of mankind. He might, had he chosen, lived 

 always among the great and the rich, might have dwelt 

 in cities and traveled often abroad. Instead he bought 

 a farm in a fertile valley of New England, a farm having 

 that charming New England combination of meadow and 

 hillside and forest, and there he settled down to live, to 

 do his real serious work in life. That was Edgewood, and 

 there he wrote, little by little, &quot;My Farm at Edgewood.&quot; 

 probably the most interesting and charming farm book yet 

 written. 



Living there at Edgewood the good old poet wrote in 

 living green of trees and vines, of flowers and grass and 

 of growing crops real poems that were much more satis 

 fying to him than any that he had written in black and 

 white in books. There his dreams came true. There his 

 children grew up beside him, his orchards, his gardens, his 

 marvelously beautiful tree-enclosed lawn, his mountainside* 

 all forested, his fertile fields well tilled, all together made 

 a combination that might well fill his life with joy. 



When I was only a little boy I read over and over again 

 the one book &quot;My Farm at Edgewood&quot; and it taught me 

 very many things that have made me a saner, simpler, 

 wiser man, satisfied with natural things, believing in the 

 fields and meadows and in the goodness of country living, 

 and in living that came from the fields and was a direct 

 expression of them. Such was the teaching of Donald G. 

 Mitchell. And so when many years had passed away and 

 I one day found myself timidly knocking at the gates of 

 i Edgewood it was with rare and astonished joy that I 

 J learned that it had none of it been a dream, that Edge- 

 wood yet existed little changed, that it was yet more 

 beautiful than a dream, that Donald G. Mitchell yet lived, 

 yet worked, though not so much any more, and that yet 

 his thought went out toward others, that he even read THK 

 GAZETTE. 



I sat beside him and looked at him long and with love 

 and wonder. What a grand man he was to look upon, 

 a great man, a lion among men ! If one knew nothing at 

 all of his work he would yet look a great man. And the 

 thought came and abode with me, &quot;Why here is this man, 

 one of our greatest Americans, living simply, naturally, 

 on the soil among the trees that he has planted, the vines 

 and flowers that he has planted, surrounded by the farm 

 acres that he has tilled and enriched and made beautiful, 



