MY FARM OF EDGEWOOD 



me, must be a clean, clear sweep for the fur- 

 rows. Yet I remember there were long wavy 

 lines of elder-bushes, and wild-cherries, grop- 

 ing beside the disorderly dividing fences. 

 There were weakly old apple-trees, with black- 

 ened, dead tops, and with trunks half concealed 

 by thickets of dwarfish shoots ; there were trip- 

 lets of lithe elms, and hickory trees, scattered 

 here and there; — in some fields, stunted, drag- 

 gled cedar bushes, and masses of yellow-weed ; 

 — a little patch of ploughed-land in the corner of 

 one enclosure, and a waving half acre of rye in 

 the middle of the next. The fences themselves 

 were disjointed and twisted, — the fields with- 

 out uniformity in size, and with no order in 

 their arrangement. 



*T think we must mend the look of these 

 meadows, Coombs?" 



And the dapper Somersetshire man, with 

 his hat defiantly on one side— "Please God, and 

 I think we will, sir." 



I must do him the justice to say that he was 

 as good as his word. In looking over the scene 

 now, I find no straggling cedars, no scattered 

 shoots of elms; the wayward elders, and the 

 wild-cherries save one protecting and orderly 

 hedgerow along the northern border of the 

 farm — are gone. The decrepid apple-trees are 



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