120 MY FARM 



them, as I have done, against injury. But it appears 

 to me that judicious management of land in the 

 neighborhood of large towns, should not ignore 

 wholly, the conservation of those picturesque effects, 

 which at no very remote time, may come to have a 

 marketable value, greater even than the productive 

 capacity of the soil. 



I have even had the hardihood to leave upon cer 

 tain particularly intractable spots of the hill land, 

 groups of myrtles, briers, scrubby oaks, wild grapes, 

 and birches, to tangle themselves together as they 

 will, in a wanton savagery of growth. Such a 

 copse makes a round perch or two of wilderness 

 about the sprawling wreck of an old cellar and 

 chimney, which have traditional smack of former 

 Indian occupancy; and the site gives color to 

 the tradition ; for you look from it southeasterly 

 over three square miles of wavy meadows, through 

 which a river gleams ; and over bays that make good 

 fishing ground, and over a ten-mile reach of shim 

 mering sea. A little never-failing spring bubbles up 

 a few yards away ; and to the westward and north 

 ward, the land piles in easy slope, making sunny shel 

 ter, where, first on all the hillside, the snow van 

 ishes in Spring. The Indian people had a quick eye 

 for such advantages of position. 



In still further confirmation, I have turned up an 



