90 OUT-OF-TOWN PLACES. 



that supports, maybe, your garden wall, by due atten- 

 tion, and a shovel full or two of fresh mould, can be 

 thoroughly obliterated ; but if submitted to the 

 swash of the rains, it gapes and throws off a great 

 ooze of yellow mud, which, next spring time, tempts 

 the foraging shovel of the road-menders again, and in 

 a few years your whole road-side is a disorderly line 

 of jagged earth-pits, with raw boulders clustering at 

 the front of each. A little timely care, often repeated, 

 may at last win upon the regard of the barbarian fol- 

 lowers of the scraper and hoe, and they may grow 

 unwittingly into a respect for your love of order 

 Such miracles are subject of record. A safer alter- 

 native, however, if your road-side be no more exten- 

 sive than that of my friend Lackland, is to supply, 

 at your own cost, an occasional defect in the road-bed 

 from the screenings of the coal, or the rakings of the 

 garden, by which you may easily secure so even and 

 compact a surface, as to escape the attention of the 

 road viewers. If, on the other hand, the reach be 

 long, an arrangement can sometimes be made with 

 town-officials to keep its whole extent in perfect 

 condition, for a sum which, if it be small, will be 

 remunerative in the exemption it gives. 



Nothing contributes more to an air of thrift 

 than neat and orderly road-sides ; I would not 

 urge any finical arrangement of turf, or clipping 



