OUT-OF-TOWN PLACES 



luxuriant fertility by reason of the leakage 

 and waste which it inevitably secured, and 

 whose richness was due rather to lack of care 

 than to skill. There were intervals too of 

 meadow upland, through which some little 

 rivulet from the pasture hill-side meandered 

 on its way to the larger brook of the lowland, 

 and which were kept in verdant wealth (no 

 thanks to any human manager) by the re- 

 freshing influences of the rivulets alone. Four 

 or five such straggling brooklets murmured 

 down from the pasture high-lands, and a Dev- 

 onshire farmer would have given to each one 

 a wide and wealth-giving distribution over 

 acres and acres of the slanting meadows. 

 But there was nothing of this. They watered 

 their little rod-wide margin of succulent 

 grasses, then dropped away into some marshy 

 flat, where the flags and rushes grew ram- 

 pantly, until these too gave place to alders, 

 poison sumacs, soft maples and black-ash 

 trees. 



The fences were as motley as the militia- 

 men's coats on a first Monday of May. From 

 time to time some previous tenant or owner 

 had devoted "fall leisure" to the erection of a 

 wall— mostly in continuation of a great range 

 of barrier which separated the hill-lands from 



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