AN OLD-STYLE FARM. 



SOME twenty odd years ago more or less I 

 chanced to be the owner of a wild, unkempt, 

 slatternly farm, of three or four hundred acres in 

 extent, amid the rocky fastnesses of eastern Connec- 

 ticut. The township in which it lay was a scattered 

 wilderness of a settlement, lying along the Hartford 

 and New London turnpike. There was a toll-gate (I 

 remember that) ; and I have a fancy that the toll-gath- 

 erer was a sallow-faced shoemaker with club-feet, who 

 sometimes made his appearance with a waxed-end in 

 his mouth, and a flat-headed hammer in his hand. 

 He hardly wields the hammer any more ; and his last 

 waxed-end must long ago have been drawn tight, and 

 clipped away. 



There was a wild common over which the Novem- 

 ber winds swept with a pestilent force, with nothing 

 to break them, except a pair of twin churches. One 

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