III. 



CROPS AND PROFITS. 



The Hill Land. 



BEFORE we keep company farther the reader 

 and I let me spread before him, as well as I 

 may, a map of the farm land. I may describe it, in 

 gross, as a great parallelogram, intersected by the 

 quiet public highway, which divides it into two great 

 squares. The eastern square is, for the most part, as 

 level as the carpet on my library floor, and its crops 

 make checkers like the figures on the ingrain. The 

 eastern half is toward the town ; and upon its edge, 

 by the highway, are the farm buildings I have 

 grouped around the stone cottage. The western 

 half is rolling ; and beyond the whitey-gray farm 

 house, with which I entered upon my portraiture, it 

 heaves up into a great billow of hill, half banded 

 with woodland, and half green with pasture. 



