springtime night, and a hundred perfumes mix in the fields and woods 

 by night then my farm is an Eden meet for angels' visits. 



Here summer comes and sweats with toil of growing cabbages, and 

 peas, and lettuce, and pears, and onions (that perfumery for the humble), 

 and cherries, and strawberries. Now stop. Strawberries? Why didn't 

 you come, friend, when my strawberries were ripe? I had tame and 

 wild ones, though for me I like wild ones better. But any will do. 

 And when the tenant's cow gives cream instead of skimmed milk, and 

 the strawberries are ripe and luscious well, all I say is you had better 

 happen around. And when summer gets down to hard work, and ripens 

 the oats, and makes the corn grow so fast you can fairly see it grow if 

 you stay half an hour, and turns wheatfields from green to gold, and 

 makes my clover bloom, and has the sun work long hours and keep the 

 stars out late o' nights if they want to shine a spell then summer is 

 bewildering. 



And in autumn my vineyard is worth a voyage across the ocean to 

 get to see. The beautiful leaf delicately contrived of Him who invented 

 beauty, throws its shadow on purple clusters with an earlier frost on 

 them than gathers on the housetops in October. Then I forget 

 whether grapes are utilitarian or artistic, whether they should be eaten 

 or looked at and wondered at. I love to see their abundance of cluster 

 arid loveliness, and am glad to own this farm ; and when the leaves 

 begin to weary of fluttering to the winds and fall through sheer idleness, 

 and the elms grow yellow, and willow leaves have a jaundice look, and 

 the ivies are glorious as skies of sunset, and every tree trunk they 

 engirdle is ruby, as if it were not tree, but gem, and the maples blush 

 and hang out scarlet banners, and oaks are gorgeous, and when the 

 leaves rustle under your feet, then I wish fall lasted twelve months. 

 To kick around over your own leaves is to taste bliss ; and I am 

 haughty to own a farm. Winter, spring, summer and fall come here 

 to enjoy themselves, and they are very welcome. 



In summer, when I lie, surcharged with indolence, down by my 

 spring in the shadows, with the water standing in pools, and catching 

 leaf and sky and cloud in its mirror, and holding them up like signals 

 to the clouds sailing over my farm, life grows glad. We are a hos- 

 pitable lot, the farm and the spring and I, and, like Abraham at his 

 tent door, hail all who go along our way to stop and be sociable (all 

 except the assessor. Not the farm, nor the spring, nor the ravine, 

 nor the corn growing in rows or standing in shock, none of us nor all of 



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