OUT-OF-TOWN PLACES 



mals, as the pastures carried in good condition 

 through the summer; and the arable land was 

 supposed equal to the growth of such grain 

 and vegetables as would suffice for man and 

 beast throughout the year. It was an old, lazy 

 reckoning of capabilities, which implied little 

 or no progress, and which took no account of 

 any systematic rotation. I never see a farm 

 advertised under the formula I have named 

 — suitably divided into tillage, mowing, and 

 pasture-land— but I feel sure that the adver- 

 tiser is a respectable, old-fashioned gentle- 

 man, who keeps a long-tailed black coat for 

 Sundays and training-days, and who has in- 

 herited his agricultural opinions from a very 

 dull and stiff-necked ancestry. Such an- 

 nouncements — and they are to be seen not 

 unfrequently in the journals— impress me 

 very much as the advertisement of a desirable 

 dwelling might do— "suitably divided into 

 cooking, eating, and sleeping quarters." 



There are, to be sure, rough pasture-lands 

 strewn with rocks, or full of startling ine- 

 qualities of surface, which must retain for an 

 indefinite period their office for simple graz- 

 ing purposes; but, with rare exceptions, there 

 are not anywhere in the northeastern States 

 any considerable stretches of meadow capable 



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