ii4 OUT-OF-TOWN PLACES. 



ing developments. If, for instance, my friend Lack 

 land, whose place I have described in previous pages, 

 had found a landscape gardener capable of inaugurat- 

 ing all the changes I have described, and had estab- 

 lished his garden, his mall, his shrubberies, and had 

 made the cliff in the corner nod with its blooming 

 columbines, within a month after occupation, and 

 established his dwarf pears in full growth and fruit- 

 age, there may have been a glad surprise ; but the 

 very completeness of the change would have left no 

 room for that exhilaration of spirits, with which we 

 pursue favorite aims to their attainment. No trout- 

 fisher, who is worthy the name, wants his creel 

 loaded in the beginning ; he wants the pursuit the 

 alternations of hope and fear ; the coy rest of his fly 

 upon this pool the whisk of its brown hackle down 

 yonder rapid its play upon the eddies where possi- 

 bly some swift strike may be made the sway of his 

 rod, and the whiz of his reel under the dash of some 

 struggling victim. 



It is a mistake, therefore, I think, to aim at the 

 completion of a country home in a season, or in two, 

 or some half a dozen. Its attractiveness lies, or 

 should lie, in its prospective growth of charms. Your 

 city home when once the architect, and plumber, 

 and upholsterer have done their work is in a sense 

 complete, and the added charms must lie in the genial 



