34 HOW TO LIVE IN THE COUNTRY 



live in as a Dutch oven, in no way as attractive as a 

 common city home for in the city one house shades 

 another. I have just now in sight a country house 

 where the owner began with grading and tree-cutting. 

 He sheared off every knoll and filled all the hollows, 

 and then built a house. It will be at least ten years 

 before he can give himself a country environment. 



This grading business is dangerous altogether and 

 should be undertaken only after a good deal of con- 

 sideration. As a rule, the rolls and swales and hol- 

 lows are Nature's idea of grace and beauty. She 

 fills the hollows with mint and ferns and forget-me- 

 nots, and over the rolls she scatters her grasses and 

 clovers. What one has to do is to sit down on the 

 highest point of his land, at the very outset, and try 

 to understand what Nature has been doing. 



Get as nearly as possible the full relation of your 

 land to the rest of the land about. Sit there until 

 you can feel with Nature, catch her idea and the sen- 

 timent of your homestead. Be sure it is part of a 

 poem. It might be well to wait a few days and take 

 another survey, and then a third with your wife and 

 children. 



As soon as you have begun to grade and level 

 down, you are liable to throw your property out of 

 relationship to its surroundings. I can show you a 

 hillside, where the first homesteader, instead of level- 

 ing his house to the land, leveled the land to his 

 house ; this made no end of work for himself, for the 

 showers came guttering down and filling up his hoi- 



