MY FARM OF EDGEWOOD 



eyed me curiously on my first visit, with an 

 oblique twist of their heads, and of a red- 

 tasselled Tom, who sounded a gobble of alarm, 

 as I marched upon the premises, and met me 

 with a formidable strut. These birds are very 

 human. I never go to the town but I see men 

 who remind me of the gobblers; and I never 

 see my gobblers but they remind me pleasantly 

 of men in the town. 



Immediately beyond the gates, which opened 

 upon the farmery, was a quaint square box of 

 red trimmed off with white (whose old-fash- 

 ioned coloring I maintain), being a tenant 

 house of most venerable age, and standing in 

 the middle of a wild and ragged garden. The 

 road has made two easy curves up to this point, 

 and skirts a great hill that rises boldly on the 

 right; on the left, and beyond the red tenant 

 house with its clustering lilacs, and shading 

 maples, is a mossy orchard; and with the 

 mossy orchard on the left, and the sudden hills 

 piling to the right, the border of the land is 

 reached. 



The wooden farmhouse, which lay so quietly 

 under the trees, at the foot of the hill, when I 

 first saw the place, is long since burned and 

 gone. It was the old story of ashes in a 

 wooden kit — very lively ashes, that one night 



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