222 OUT-OF-TOWN PLACES. 



coining disgust arises, I think, in the majority of 

 instances, from the lay out of more considerable im- 

 provements than can be thoroughly kept in hand or 

 matured : and it is needless to say that no new pur- 

 chaser will ever pay a large price for gravel walks 

 overgrown with turf, or gullied by the rains, or for 

 shrubbery that leads a starveling life in a great en- 

 compassing circle of foul growth. An inferior plan 

 completed is always more salable than a grandiose 

 scheme but half carried out. Again, ornamental 

 country architecture never brings its cost, save under 

 very exceptional conditions ; therefore the proprietor 

 who forecasts a possible early sale, should be very coy 

 of placing much capital in flamboyant joinery or 

 expensive walks. 



On the other hand, whatever expenditure con- 

 tributes to the real productive capacity of the land, 

 whether in the way of drainage, or permanent 

 fertilizers, or judicious farm buildings proper, will 

 prompt buyers, and in nine cases in ten, return 

 its full cost. The man who spends five thousand 

 dollars in bringing up the revenue of a fifty-acre farm 

 from four hundred to a thousand dollars a year, is 

 working upon a safe basis ; but the man who expends 

 an equal sum in finical equipments of house and 

 garden, and in the shaping of a great mass of walks 

 and the planting of exotics while the land remains 



