MY OWN ACRE 



a contour grade would have been pettily cir- 

 cuitous and uninteresting, and to cross it com- 

 fortably, there should be either a bridge or a 

 dam; and a dam with water behind it seemed 

 pleasanter every way — showed less incongruity 

 and less inutility — than a bridge with no water 

 under it. 



As to *' fooling with running water," the mere 

 trickle here in question had to be dragged out 

 of its cradle to make it run at all. It remained 

 for me to find out by experience that even that 

 weakling, imprisoned and grown to a pool, 

 though of only three hundred square feet in sur- 

 face, when aided and abetted by New England 

 frosts and exposed on a southern slope to winter 

 noonday suns, could give its amateur captor as 

 much trouble — proportionately — as any He- 

 brew babe drawn from the bulrushes of the Nile 

 is said to have given his. 



Now if there is any value in recording these 

 experiences it can be only in the art principles 

 they reveal. To me in the present small instance 

 the principle illustrated was that of the true 

 profile line for ascent or descent in a garden. 



17 



