NEGLECTED BEAUTY. 



should be built to, or out of, the spot where it stands, 

 as if it grew there, quite as much as the trees grew 

 there that were cut down to make room for it. Those 

 trees did not grow with just the same physiognomy 

 as trees in another locality. Then a lot ought not 

 to be like a girl's apron, full of posies, but should 

 have in it or on it those plants or trees which fit 

 the lay of the land. One may accumulate a vast 

 amount of fine things in themselves, and yet the 

 whole of them be anything but beautiful in their 

 relation to each other and to the house. Perhaps 

 you do not need a hedge at all. If not, pray do not 

 have it, certainly not because Smith has one. I know 

 a village where a man put up a board fence with the 

 two middle boards crossed in the form of an X. 

 Inside of two years there were eighteen other such 

 fences put up in the same village. One of these 

 was quite enough. 



My friend R saw a cut-leaved weeping birch 

 and admired it. He ordered two set out in his door- 

 yard at once. One was enough; two spoiled the 

 oddity of the peculiar tree, and the pleasure of look- 

 ing at that one. Oddities should be odd, and not too 

 freely used. But if you will study a country village 

 you will rarely find much individuality in the plant- 

 ing. There will be perhaps three or four types of 

 houses, of yards, of shrubberies, of orchards. Every- 

 body is trying to do what everybody else is doing; 

 trying to think, trying to believe, trying to do and 

 trying to be happy in the same way. If a man like 

 Thoreau comes along, who sees wild nature and 

 enjoys it, they cannot either understand or tolerate 

 him it must be allowed that he cannot tolerate 



