WAY-SIDE HINTS 



progress is essential to all rational enjoyment, 

 whether in things rural, Christian, or com- 

 mercial. 



And for this reason I allege that all things 

 which are proper to be done about a country 

 house, are not to be done at once. Half the 

 charm of life in such a home is in every 

 week's and every season's succeeding develop- 

 ments. If, for instance, my friend Lackland, 

 whose place I have described in previous 

 pages, had found a landscape gardener capa- 

 ble of inaugurating all the changes I have de- 

 scribed, and had established his garden, his 

 mall, his shrubberies, and had made the cliff 

 in the corner nod with its blooming colum- 

 bines, within a month after occupation, and 

 established his dwarf pears in full growth and 

 fruitage, there may have been a glad surprise ; 

 but the very completeness of the change would 

 have left no room for that exhilaration of spir- 

 its, with which we pursue favorite aims to 

 their attainment. No trout fisher, who lis 

 worthy the name, wants his creel loaded in the 

 beginning; he wants the pursuit — the alterna- 

 tions of hope and fear; the coy rest of his fly 

 upon this pool — the whisk of its brown hackle 

 down yonder rapid — its play upon the eddies 

 where possibly some swift strike may be made 



125 



