38 HOW TO LIVE IN THE COUNTRY 



a very simple outline sketch that you can understand 

 yourself, even if no one else would pronounce it 

 beautiful. Anyone who undertakes to live in the 

 country must first of all learn to see things, and this 

 chart of yours tells what you see, not only now visible, 

 but as hereafter possible. If you have only a little 

 bit of vision power, cultivate it. 



Look over your new property, and before you do 

 anything whatever think what might be done. Leave 

 out all artistic sketches and just study how you and 

 yours can fit nicely into what Nature has already 

 done, and how you can improve, without undoing or 

 spoiling what has gone before. Depend on one 

 thing, that when you begin to contradict Nature and 

 plow her out of her fields you will have a long job 

 of it. 



This paper chart from which you are to do your 

 work you can easily see is extremely important, be- 

 cause it can be mended and amended, but if you begin 

 directly on the soil, striking in anywhere, you will at 

 once be doing something that cannot easily be recti- 

 fied. 



Right after the plotting of your property, in fact 

 while you are still carrying on your study you may 

 undertake the drainage problem. I am quite sure 

 that, however soon you initiate this ditching business, 

 you will not get to the bottom of it for several years. 

 I have seen very contented country home-makers 

 laying out what is called the Waring system all over 

 their acres. I have found that the adoption of this 



