AN OLD-STYLE FARM. 5 



is to me very charming charming in those old days 

 when the woods and meadows were new, and charm- 

 ing now when the woods and the meadows are old. 

 Well, well, I began to tell the story of a farm, and 

 here I am idling along the borders of a brook ! 



The toll-gate, the churches, the tayern, the store 

 lay strewn along a high-road, three miles away from 

 the valley-farm, of which in those days I was busy 

 occupant. And yet so bare of trees was the interval, 

 that from many a nook under the coppices of the 

 pasture-land I could see the twin churches, the tavern, 

 and, with a glass, detect even a stray cow, or the lum- 

 bering coach which from time to time wended along 

 the high-road of the village. 



The farm was suitably divided (as the old adver- 

 tisements were wont to say) into tillage, meadow, and 

 pasture-lands. This distribution of parts implied that 

 the meadows would furnish enough hay in ordinary 

 seasons for the winter's keep of such and so many 

 animals, as the pastures carried in good condition 

 through the summer ; and the arable land was sup- 

 posed equal to the growth of such grain and vege- 

 tables as would suffice for man and beast throughout 

 the year. It was an old, lazy reckoning of capabili- 

 ties, which implied little or no progress, and which 

 took no account of any systematic rotation. I never 

 see a farm advertised under the formula I have named 



