22 LIBERTY AND A LIVING. 



few months in the depth of winter and make 

 enough money to pay my way during those 

 months, going back to my country life when 

 the spring opens. Nevertheless, after a fair 

 trial of several years of this kind of life, much 

 country, and little city, had I to choose to- 

 morrow between giving up one or the other 

 entirely, between devoting myself wholly to 

 making every penny out of my garden and my 

 poultry-yard, never going to New York at all, 

 except for a day or two once or twice a year, 

 or beginning again the city life of incessant 

 work, of anxiety, of late hours, and bad air, 

 with its compensations in the way of more 

 money, better clothes, amusements between 

 these two lives I should not hesitate for a mo- 

 ment. The country life, as I make my life, 

 gives me out-door work, which is now a physi- 

 cal necessity, gives me more light and air, gives 

 me my long evenings before a wood fire, and 

 entire freedom from worry or business anxiety. 

 My friends may say, and do say, that without 

 my few weeks or months in the city there would 

 occur inevitably a rapid deterioration, mentally. 

 They are kind enough to hint that at present I 

 am better than I might be. At all events, they 



