MR. URBAN AND A COUNTRY HOUSE 



no new purchaser will ever pay a large price 

 for gravel walks overgrown with turf, or gul- 

 lied by the rains, or for shrubbery that 

 leads a starveling life in a great encompassing 

 circle of foul growth. An inferior plan com- 

 pleted is always more salable than a grandiose 

 scheme but half carried out. Again, orna- 

 mental country architecture never brings its 

 cost, save under very exceptional conditions; 

 therefore the proprietor who forecasts a pos- 

 sible early sale, should be very coy of placing 

 much capital in flamboyant joinery or expen- 

 sive walks. 



On the other hand, whatever expenditure 

 contributes to the real productive capacity of 

 the land, whether in the way of drainage, or 

 permanent fertilizers, or judicious farm build- 

 ings proper, will prompt buyers, and in nine 

 cases in ten, return its full cost. The man who 

 spends five thousand dollars in bringing up 

 the revenue of a fifty-acre farm from four 

 hundred to a thousand dollars a year, is work- 

 ing upon a safe basis; but the man who ex- 

 pends an equal sum in finical equipments of 

 house and garden, and in the shaping of a 

 great mass of walks and the planting of exot- 

 ics — while the land remains at its old fixed 

 point of productiveness — may find buyers 



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