32 HOW TO LIVE IN THE COUNTRY 



your own old homestead if you can. These deserted 

 places are being picked up quite too much by 

 strangers and mutilated with all sorts of improve- 

 ments. I would rather have a few old apple trees, 

 put in good order, of course; just the trees that I 

 climbed in my childhood, Spitzenburg and Rhode 

 Island Greenings, some of them leaning down so that 

 a child may creep up and hide with the robins among 

 the apples. 



I would rather have these old trees than all the 

 avenues, automobile driven, that are planted around 

 Long Island Sound by millionaires. The senti- 

 mental side of life pays. In England families count ; 

 here it is only the individual. The boy is pushed 

 out of the homestead at twenty to start a new home, 

 and so nothing is ever finished. Learn to let the 

 family spirit live in all that you do. 



You may possibly be able to do as I have done, 

 after forming a partnership with your own sons, go 

 with the birds North and South and have a home at 

 each end of the route. In Florida we escape the 

 rigor of a Northern winter, and with the robins we 

 flit Northward when the daffodils blossom and the 

 maple sap runs. A Christmas bath in Lake Lucy, an 

 arm full of roses on New Year's day, and oranges all 

 through January, these things fit well to peace of 

 mind and long life. 



