II. 



TAKING REINS IN HAND. 



Around the He 



ouse. 



A LTHOUGH possessing all the special requisites 

 ~LJL of which I had been in search, yet the farm was 

 by no means without its inaptitudes and roughnesses. 

 There was an accumulation of half-decayed logs in 

 one quarter, of mouldering chips in another, being 

 monumental of the choppings and hewings of half a 

 score of years. Old iron had its establishment in 

 this spot; cast-away carts and sleds in that; walls 

 which had bulged out with the upheaval of I know 

 not how many frosts, had been ingeniously mended 

 with discarded harrows or axles ; there was the usual 

 debris of clam shells, and there were old outbuild 

 ings standing awry, and showing rhomboidal angles 

 in their outline. These approached the house very 

 nearly, so nearly, in fact, that in one direction at 



