MY FARM OF EDGEWOOD 



wasteful excesses, and by his example give 

 credit to order, discipline, and the best graces 

 of manhood, — he is reaping honors that will 

 endure: — not measured by the skulls he piles 

 on any Bagdad plains, but by the mouths 

 he has fed — by the flowers he has taught to 

 bloom, and by the swelling tide of harvests 

 which, year by year, he has pushed farther and 

 farther up the flanks of the hills. 



I would not have my reader believe that I 

 have carried out as yet within the limits of 

 the farm herein described all that I have ad- 

 vised — whether in the things which relate to 

 its productive capacity, or to its embellish- 

 ment. All this ripens by slow progression 

 which we cannot unduly hasten. Nor do I 

 know that full accomplishment would add to 

 the charm; I think that those who entertain 

 the most keen enjoyment of a country home- 

 stead, are they who regard it always in the 

 light of an unfinished picture — to which, sea- 

 son by season, they add their little touches, or 

 their broad, bold dashes of color ; and yet with 

 a vivid and exquisite foresight of the future 

 completed charm, beaming through their dis- 

 orderly masses of pigments, like the slow un- 

 folding of a summer's day. 



In all art, it is not so much the bald image 



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