THE STABLES GRO UNDS. 267 



and potatoes, now suggests happy holly-hangings of the fireside 

 and grateful harvest's home, hides all the formal lines and angles, 

 breaks all the stiff rules of art, dances lightly over the grave pre- 

 cision of human handiwork, softens, shades and shelters all under 

 a gorgeous vesture of Heaven's own weaving. 



Soon, while we are sitting in this leafy boudoir, comes "the 

 master," as good a specimen of the stout, hearty, old English 

 farmer as we shall find, and we go lady and all to look at 

 the horses, cows and pigs. The stables are mostly small, incon- 

 veniently separated, and badly fitted up, and there is but little in 

 them to boast of in the way of cattle ; but there is one new build- 

 ing, incongruously neat among the rest, and in this there are 

 some roomy stalls, with iron mangers, sliding neck-chains, and 

 asphalte floor with grates and drain. Here is the best stock of 

 the farm : among the rest, a fine, fat Hereford cow, which has 

 just been sold to the butcher for $60, and a handsome heifer of 

 the same blood, heavy with calf, which has been lately bought 

 for $15, the farmer chuckling as he passes his hand over her 

 square rump, as if it had been a shrewd purchase. He values 

 his best dairy cow at $45. 



We then go to the cider-mill and the sheds to look at some 

 implements ; next to the ground, at some distance, where the la- 

 borers are all at work ridging for turnips, (Swedes or Ruta-baga.) 

 The larger part of the field is already planted, and in some other 

 fields the young plants are coming up. The turnip crop of the 

 farm this year is to be grown on one hundred acres, the whole 

 area of the farm being less than three hundred. 



The soil of this field is a fine, light loam. It was last year in 

 wheat ; the stubble was turned under soon after harvest with a 

 skin-coulter-plow, an instrument that pairs off the surface be- 

 fore the mould-board of the plow, and throws it first to the bot- 

 tom of the furrow ; cross-plowed and scarified again the same 



