MY FARM OF EDGEWOOD 



believe there is nothing in nature which so en- 

 laces one's love for the country, and binds it 

 with willing fetters, as the silver meshes of a 

 brook. Not for its beauty only, but for its 

 changes; it is the warbler; it is the silent 

 muser ; it is the loiterer ; it is the noisy brawler, 

 and like all brawlers beats itself into angry 

 foam, and turns in the eddies demurely pen- 

 itent, and runs away to sulk under the bush. 

 A brook, too, piques terribly a man's audacity, 

 if he have any eye for landscape gardening. 

 It seems so manageable, in all its wildness. 

 Here in the glen a bit of dam will give a white 

 gush of waterfall, and a pouring sluice to some 

 overshot wheel; and the wheel shall have its 

 connecting shaft and whirl of labors. Of 

 course there shall be a little scape-way for the 

 trout to pass up and down ; a rustic bridge shall 

 spring across somewhere below, and the stream 

 shall be coaxed into loitering where you will 

 —under the roots of a beech that leans over the 

 water— into a broad pool of the pasture close, 

 where the cattle may cool themselves in 

 August. In short, it is easy to see how a brook 

 may be held in leash, and made to play the 

 wanton for you, summer after summer. I do 

 not forget that poor Shenstone ruined himself 

 by his coquetries with the trees and brooks at 



14 



