MY FARM OF EDGEWOOD 



Even now I look back with a good deal of 

 self-applause upon my success in extricating 

 myself from the merciless and magnetic ear- 

 nestness of the red-bearded Mr. Van Heine; 

 I think of my escape from the dusty high-road, 

 the angular joinery of the house, the bloated 

 hills, blotched with junipers, the straggling 

 trunks of the drowned trees, and the imper- 

 turbable insistence of the German, with his 

 expletive dam and his black-stemmed porcelain 

 pipe as I think of escapes from some threat- 

 ening pestilence. 



Another country place was brought to my 

 attention, under circumstances that forbade any 

 doubt of its positive attractions. There was 

 wood in abundance, dotted here and there with 

 a profuse and careless luxuriance; there were 

 rounded banks of hills, and meadows through 

 which an ample stream came flowing with a 

 queenly sweep, and with a sheen that caught 

 every noontide, and repeated it in a glorious 

 blazon of gold. It skirted the hills, it skirted 

 the wood, and came with a gushing fulness 

 upon the very margin of the quiet little house- 

 yard that compassed the dwelling. And from 

 the door, underneath cherry trees, one could 

 catch glimpses of the great stretch of the Hud- 



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