MY OWN ACRE 



On this green of the dryads, where it inter- 

 cepts the ''avenue" that sHps over from the 

 Elm Street trolley-cars, lies, such as it is, my 

 own acre; house, lawn, shrubberies and, at the 

 rear, in the edge of the pines, the study. Back 

 there by the study — which sometimes in irony 

 we call the power-house — the lawn merges into 

 my seven other acres, in Paradise. Really the 

 whole possession is a much humbler one than I 

 find myself able to make it appear in the flatter- 

 ing terms of land measure. Those seven acres 

 of Paradise I acquired as "waste land." Never- 

 theless, if I were selHng that "waste," that 

 "hole in the ground," it would not hurt my 

 conscience, such as it is, to declare that the birds 

 on it alone are worth more than it cost: wood- 

 thrushes and robins, golden orioles, scarlet tana- 

 gers, blackbirds, bluebirds, oven-birds, cedar- 

 birds, veeries, vireos, song-sparrows, flycatchers, 

 kinglets, the flicker, the cuckoo, the nuthatch, 

 the chickadee and the rose-breasted grosbeak, 

 not to mention jays or kingfishers, swallows, 

 the little green heron or that cock of the walk, 

 the red squirrel. 



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