climbing up the thing and sliding down the thing a good many times, 1 

 am firmly convinced that I own in the neighborhood of one hundred and 

 sixty acres; and this increase in my estate is wholly attributable to the 

 steep incline. To own a hill seems to me the acme of desire. Aspira- 

 tion blooms out on hills, and besides so situated, I need not migrate 

 with the birds to get the seasons, or summer or winter residence. All 

 I need do is to toil up the hill, or slide down it. At one extremity, viz., 

 the hill, I call the habitation there erected Quaylecliff, and the residence 

 erected at the base of the hill I call Quaylecroft. Now, could a man 

 owning a level farm, every foot of which is tillable, have so economical, 

 and yet so delightful arrangement, or coin such names for his vernacu- 

 lar? Evidently he could not. The flat farm owner may have larger 

 crops and may in consequence get some rent, and moreover, his land 

 may stay where it was put with more tenacity ; but these are inconse- 

 quential matters when compared with the legitimate aristocracy of 

 possessing such names as "cliff" and "croft." Now these localities 

 are on my farm and have been for several years. They go with the 

 place. I own one hundred and sixty acres (or close to that), of spring, 

 summer, autumn, winter. I do not wish to boast. Vanity is not natural 

 to me. I have not been accused of a predisposition to braggadocio, but 

 do confess that when I consider how sections of the four seasons are 

 mine to rent, loan, or sell, I am with difficulty restrained from a little 

 Falstaffian swagger, not to say lying. Sometime, I fear, when off 

 guard, I shall be guilty of both ; but the provocation will, to my thought, 

 justify. 



This farm has had a fine diversity of tenants since I have been 

 paying taxes on it. Variety is the spice (allspice, also pepper), of 

 farming. I detest the humdrum of changelessness, and have suffered 

 nothing from ennui from this cause since becoming proud possessor of 

 this estate. My first tenant was an Ethiopian. He was a good man, 

 and religious, and his wife raised turkeys, and he had a family great for 

 multitude, but his wife had in some calamity prior to coming to my 

 farm lost one of her bodily supports, and so chased her family over 

 my farm on one leg. Now this condition irritated my sense of female 

 grace. Woman is a biped. This woman was a uniped. Such a con- 

 dition was contrary to nature ; and a farmer must not go in the face of 

 nature any more than in the face of Providence. I say no more. The 

 next renter was, in the vernacular, a Dutchman. He was a brave 

 horse trader, and set posts for my vineyard, and possessed much suavity 



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