6 OUT-OF-TOWN PLACES. 



suitably divided into tillage, mowing, and pasture- 

 land but I feel sure that the advertiser is a respect- 

 able, old-fashioned gentleman, who keeps a long-tailed 

 black coat for Sundays and training-days, and who 

 has inherited his agricultural opinions from a very 

 dull and stiff-necked ancestry. Such announcements 

 and they are to be seen not unfrequently in the 

 journals impress me very much as the advertise- 

 ment of a desirable dwelling might do " suitably 

 divided into cooking, eating, and sleeping quarters." 



There are, to be sure, rough pasture-lands strewn 

 with rocks, or full of startling inequalities of surface, 

 which must retain for an indefinite period their office 

 for simple grazing purposes ; but, with rare excep- 

 tions, there are not anywhere in the northeastern 

 States any considerable stretches of meadow capable 

 of growing the better English grasses, which are not 

 susceptible of improvement under occasional tillage. 

 Draining, indeed, may be first needed, and a scarify- 

 ing with the harrow, to root out the old mosses and 

 foul growth ; but after this, a clean lift of the plow 

 and judicious dressing will work wonders. 



But, to return, (for I wish to make the picture of 

 an old-fashioned farm complete,) there were mossy 

 meadows lying along the borders of a great romping 

 millstream, which had been mown for forty years 

 without intermission ; here and there, where these 



