WAY-SIDE HINTS. 115 



socialities and hospitalities with which you can invest 

 it ; but with a country home, the fields, the flowers, 

 the paths, the hundred rural embellishments, may be 

 made to develop a constantly recurring succession of 

 attractive features. This year, a new thicket of shrub- 

 bery, or a new gate-way on some foot-path ; next 

 year, the investment of some out-lying ledge with 

 floral wonders ; the season after may come the estab- 

 lishment of a meadow (by judicious drainage) where 

 some ugly marsh has offended the eye ; and the suc- 

 ceeding summer may show the redemption of the 

 harsh briary up-land that you have scourged into 

 fertility and greenness. This year, a thatched rooflet 

 to some out-lying stile ; next year, a rustic seat under 

 the trees which have begun to oifer a tempting shade. 

 This year, the curbing of the limbs of some over- 

 growing poplar ; and next year if need be a lop- 

 ping away of the tree itself to expose a fresher 

 beauty in the shrubbery beneath. 



Most planters about a country home are too much 

 afraid of the axe ; yet judicious cutting is of as much 

 importance as planting ; ' and I have seen charming 

 thickets shoot up into raw, lank assemblage of boles 

 of trees without grace or comeliness, for lack of cour- 

 age to cut trees at the root. For all good effects of 

 foliage in landscape gardening after the fifth year 

 the axe is quite as important an implement as the 



