46 COME INTO THE GARDEN 



the earth out smooth — is an obsession which I 

 am tempted to believe leads to wilder extrava- 

 gances than any other in which a man may in- 

 dulge. And it afflicts all sorts of men. Thomas 

 Jefferson spent ten years in leveling a space eight 

 or ten acres in extent on the top of the mountain 

 where he built his home; and the sages of a vil- 

 lage whereof I wot not long since graded to a 

 level the entire town! Tons of earth from the 

 broad tops of gentle knolls were laboriously 

 hauled down upon the gracious curves of equally 

 gentle depressions — a feat that dressed many 

 of the roads with rich top soil and left much of 

 the land stripped to its barren clay subsoil and 

 as incapable as stone of supporting vegetation; 

 while the trees everywhere, on both upland and 

 lowland, were most of them killed, and the 

 entire section was robbed of its character and 

 all the claims to beauty and distinction which it 

 once enjoyed. 



It seems to me that neither Mr. Jefferson nor 

 the authorities of this town could have stopped 

 to think; yet a hundred years and more have 

 intervened between them, and this age should 

 know better if the other did not. But the en- 

 deavor has always been and is to change what 

 creation itself has done with the earth. It seems 

 to be impossible for the majority of human be- 



