remembers what fruit is expected of it, and that, though customary, is 

 very, very strange. God made it so. How else? 



Sauntering across the gentle slopes of my farm down in the croft 

 (for I have gentle slopes sedate as middle age not all the farm is 

 a jump up and fall down) is a ravine, which spring rains have digged 

 deep, until it is deep enough to hide a man on horseback, even if horse 

 and man were Kentucky bred. A ravine, with trees growing in it and 

 on its edge, is poetry if one knows enough to know poetry when it is 

 written in prose form. This ravine lacks only one thing to make me 

 love it to excess. As it is I love it quite enough to satisfy an exacting 

 affection. The ravine lacks water, that is its omission which alone pre- 

 vents it from perfection of beauty. But not to dwell on lacks, which 

 would be a breach of courtesy, notice how knowingly the ravine jogs 

 and zigzags, as if possessed of all the field; how it beats back on itself, 

 as having forgotten something; how it makes spaces shut from winter 

 winds, where birds find covert; here saplings and trees of sweet sixteen 

 climb up the bank, or lean over the edges, or stand on the bank, as 

 guarding a secret, or stand in the bottom of the ravine, like lads knee 

 deep in summer streams. How the wild grapevine trails with its inde- 

 scribable grace from tree to tree, and tosses out long tendrils to float to 

 and fro with the incoming and outgoing tides of air! You shall see this 

 ravine in the picture, and I take pride (albeit a religious pride) in call- 

 ing attention to the fact that this ravine grows on my farm. If I can 

 ever get money (the time seems strangely remote at this writing) I will 

 dig a well and erect a windmill, and build a waterfall in this ravine, and 

 plant cress along the watercourse, and have a lily pond at the far side 

 where my ravine steps off my farm with hesitant step, as disinclined 

 to go. In one thing I am inflexible with my hale friend, the renter, 

 namely, that no limb be cut or broken from the trees, nor any briers 

 be cut, nor any golden-rod dug from the banks of this ravine. And, 

 withal, how the ravine thrives under my ownership* I am proud of its 

 delight in my partiality. Each year the place grows in beauty and 

 tangle of growth, as if eager to please me. Whether or not I am a 

 success at raising corn and potatoes I can raise a fine ravine, which, 

 to my mind, requires much more ability than the production of potatoes 

 and com. 



Have you, my friend, have you the topography of my farm clearly in 

 your mind ? The hill-top where we saw the sea on the far south and the 

 bewildering beauty of hills and orchard and harvest field and woods 



203 



