MY FARM OF EDGEWOOD 



is unwittingly doing discredit to those laws 

 of economy, which alone justify and commend 

 the craft to a thoroughly earnest worker. 



Having brought no ambition of this sort 

 to my trial of country life, even if I had pos- 

 sessed the means to give it expression, I had 

 also no desire to give over all plans of man- 

 agement to a bailiff, however shrewd. The 

 greatest charm of a country life seems to me to 

 spring from that familiarity with the land, 

 and its capabilities, which can come only from 

 minute personal observation, or the successive 

 development of one's own methods of culture. 

 I can admire a stately crop wherever I see it; 

 but if I have directed the planting, and myself 

 applied the dressing, and am testing my own 

 method of tillage, I look upon it with a far 

 keener relish. Every week it unfolds a charm ; 

 if it puts on a lusty dark green, I see that it is 

 taking hold upon the fertilizers; if it yellows 

 in the cool nights, and grows pale, I bethink 

 me if I will not put off the planting for a week 

 in the season to come; if it curl overmuch in 

 the heats of later June, I reckon up the depth 

 of my ploughing ; and when the spindles begin 

 to peep out from their green sheaths day after 

 day, and lift up, and finally from their feathery 

 fingers shake down pollen upon the- silk nest- 



74 



