MY FARM OF EDGEWOOD 



gather bouquets of Golden-rod and Asters, set 

 off with crimson tufts of Sumac, and the scar- 

 let of maple boughs. And when I see the bril- 

 liancy of these, and smack the delicate flavor 

 of the wild-fruit, it makes me doubt if our 

 progress is, after all, as grand as it should be, 

 or as we vainly believe it to be; and (to renew 

 my parallel) — it seems to me that the old- 

 time and gone-by thinkers may possibly have 

 given us as piquant, and marrowy suggestions 

 upon whatever subject of human knowledge 

 they touched, as the hot-house philosophers of 

 to-day. I never open, of a Sunday afternoon, 

 upon the yellowed pages of Jeremy Taylor, 

 but his flavor and affluence, and horriely wealth 

 of allusions, suggest the tangled wild of the 

 garden — with its starry flowers, its piquant ber- 

 ries, its scorn of human rulings, its unkempt 

 vigor, its boughs and tendrils stretching 

 heaven-ward ; and I never water a reluctant hill 

 of yellowed cucumbers, and coax it with all 

 manner of concentrated fertilizers into bearing, 

 — but I think of the elegant education of the 

 dapper Dr. , and of the sappy, and flavor- 

 less results. 



To the westward of the garden, and con- 

 cealing a decrepit mossy wall, that is covered 

 with blackberry vines and creepers, is the flank- 



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