CHAPTER XVI 



THE RENOVATION OF OLD PLACES. 



WHATEVER objection may be urged against buying 

 and renovating old houses, will not apply to the 

 purchase of ground stocked with old trees and 

 shrubs. Many a rickety, neglected place, is filled 

 with choice old materials, which, with small expenditures in clear- 

 ing away the superfluities, and polishing the lawn, will group at 

 once into pleasing pictures. Such neglected places may be com- 

 pared with a head of luxuriant hair all uncombed and disorderly, 

 which needs but to be clean and arranged with taste to become 

 a crown of beauty to the wearer. 



Old yards are generally filled with mature trees of choice 

 species, but so huddled together, and filled in with lank neglected 

 shrubs and tangled grass, that one observes only the shiftlessness 

 and disorder, and turns with greater pleasure to look upon a 

 polished lawn with not a tree upon it : — as in music a single note 

 given purely and clearly is more pleasing than the greatest variety 

 of sounds making discords together. But a week's work among 



