MY FARM OF EDGEWOOD 



trout must lie— then losing itself, upon the 

 rim of the farm, in tangled swamp lands, 

 where, in autumn, I knew, if the farm should 

 be mine, I could see the maples all turned into 

 feathery plumes of crimson. But I did not; 

 plumes of crimson I see indeed each autumn, 

 but they are at my door; and a great reach of 

 water— on which ships tack, and tack again— 

 comes streaming to my eye as I sit quietly in 

 my chair. 



It was not from mere caprice that my adver- 

 tisement had been worded as it was. For the 

 mere establishment of a country home, one 

 hundred acres might seem an unnecessarily 

 large number, as indeed it is. But I must con- 

 fess to having felt an anxiety to test the ques- 

 tion, as to whether a country liver was really 

 made the poorer by all the acres he possessed 

 beyond the one or two immediately about his 

 homestead. Indeed I may say that I felt a 

 somewhat enthusiastic curiosity to know, and 

 to determine by actual experiment, if farm 

 lands were simply a cost and an annoyance to 

 any one who would not wholly forswear books, 

 enter the mud trenches valorously, and take 

 the pig by the ears, with his own hands. 



A half dozen acres, which a man looks after 

 in the intervals of other business, and sets 



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