Ten Thousand a Year 



255 



yield. I think that had ** Socrates" delayed too 

 long, say three years, there would have been 

 another in the place of ''Socrates.*' 



I do not recall an aspect of the Neville farm 

 which did not reflect this fundamental honesty. 

 The roadway which passed midway through the 

 farm was made as carefully and thoroughly as the 

 king's road, and was kept in perfect order. Indeed, 

 travelers through the Valley seemed to himt out 

 this private way for their machines, despite the 

 warning sign of privacy Neville erected at the 

 entrance to his estate. But a ride amidst vines and 

 trees, in bloom or laden with fruit, and cultivation 

 perfect, is a pleasure to the healthy mind, and 

 the tide of automobiles flowed on, to and fro, 

 through ''Neville Farm.'* Posts, wires, stakes, 

 clean rows of grapes, of trees, of berries; soil like 

 an ash-heap; a carpet of chickweed in November 

 beneath the vines ; a carpet of clover, vetch beneath 

 the trees; and save in mid-summer when the tools 

 were running up and down the rows, the land 

 always covered with green, because Neville's 

 first maxim in fruit-culture was, "Keep the ground 

 covered; a naked soil means an empty basket." 

 He would point to the woods as his master: "See, 

 Nature hides her nakedness with leaves. " So he 

 covered the earth with fertilizer and as quickly as 

 possible grew a protecting cover-crop. "A warm 

 soil is my coat," said he to me when I once ven- 

 tured to ask him, — ^it was a chilly April day, — 

 whether he had not forgotten his overcoat. We 



