350 AN AMERICAN FARMER IX EXGLAXD. 



taking a chaise, by which a drive of six miles brought me to a 

 small hamlet with a small and ruinous church in a very ancient 

 graveyard. I inquired for the parish clerk and found him, a 

 cobbler, at his work. The records were locked up at the curate's 

 and the curate was away. Did any one live hereabouts of the 

 name of Olmsted ? Xo. Did he ever know any one of that 

 name? No; no man there was the old hall farm. "What 

 hall ? Olmsted Hall they called it. Why ? He did not know. 



I asked to be directed to it and found it difficult of access, by 

 narrow parish roads and farm lanes. 



It proved to be a large, low and very common-place sort of 

 farm-house of stone, in the midst of a level wheat farm of 200 

 acres. It belonged to one of the Cambridge colleges, and the 

 family of the present tenant had occupied it for several genera- 

 tions. They received me kindly, and when I told them my 

 name, with some little excitement and manifestation of respect, 

 as if I had rights in the house. " Come into the old hall, sir," 

 they said, taking me to the largest room a low room, about 20 

 feet by 20, with a single low window nearly occupying one side, 

 and a monstrous old fire-place, now bricked up for a coal grate, 

 another. 



" This is the old hall." 



" Why do you call it the hall?" 



" It always was called so. I suppose it's because they used to 

 hold courts here, sir. The house used to be moated all around, 

 but they filled up the moat in front when that lane was built ; 

 that was in my father's time." 



The moat still remained around the garden, a deep ditch with 

 a low earth wall, on which grew an old hedge. At one corner 

 of the house was a yew tree, certainly several hundred years old. 

 This house, as is a matter of record, was occupied by the Ohn- 

 steds for more than two hundred years before the Puritan emi- 



