208 MY FARM. 



plumes, and I am beguiled into a new and a more 

 admiring estimate of the country life. 



Arcadia with its sylvan glories comes, drifting to 

 my vision, and the pleasant Elian fields sloping to the 

 sea. A stately Greek gentleman Xenophon who 

 has won great renown by his conduct of an army 

 among the fastnesses of Armenia, and on the borders 

 of the Caspian, has retired to his estates on the Ionian 

 wafers, and writes there a book of maxims for farm 

 management, which are not Avithout their significance 

 and value to every farmer to-day. And hitherward, 

 across the blue wash of the Adriatic, in the midst of 

 the Sabine country, which is northward and eastward 

 of Rome, I know a Roman farmer Cato-r-who has 

 been listened to with rapt attention in the Roman 

 Senate, and who centuries before the time when 

 Horace was amateur agriculturist, and planted So- 

 racte and Lucretilis in his poems wrote so mi 

 nutely, and with such rare sagacity, upon all that 

 relates to country living, and to country thrift, that I 

 might to-morrow, in virtue of his instructions only, 

 plant my bed of asparagus, and so dress and treat it 

 (always in pursuance of his directions) as to insure 

 me for the product a prize at the County-Fair ; if, 

 indeed, the shoots did not rival those famous ones of 

 Ravenna of which Pliny speaks weighing three to 

 the pound. 



