AN OLD-STYLE FARM. 7 



meadows lifted into gravelly mounds, patches of plow- 

 land had been taken up at intervals of five or eight 

 years, and by dint of heavy, laborious cartage of the 

 scant manures from the barnyard, over the interven- 

 ing meadow " swales ", had shown their periodic 

 growth of corn or potatoes, these followed by oats 

 more or less rank as the season was wet or dry and 

 again, on the following year by clover, which in its 

 turn was succeeded by red-top and timothy upon 

 which the wild meadow-growth steadily encroached. 

 There was, of course, the "barn-lot," of which all 

 old farmers boasted, maintained in a certain degree 

 of foodful succulence and luxuriant fertility by reason 

 of the leakage and waste which it inevitably secured, 

 and whose richness was due rather to lack of care 

 than to skilL There were intervals too of meadow 

 upland, through which some little rivulet from the 

 pasture hill-side meandered on its way to the larger 

 brook of the lowland, and which were kept in verdant 

 wealth (no thanks to any human manager) by the 

 refreshing influences of the rivulets alone. Four or 

 five such straggling brooklets murmured down from 

 the pasture high-lands, and a Devonshire farmer 

 would have given to each one a wide and wealth-giv- 

 ing distribution over acres and acres of the slanting 

 meadows. But there was nothing of this. They 

 watered their little rod-wide margin of succulent 



