230 OUT-OF-TOWN PLACES. 



enjoy and take a pride in ourselves. Never a man 

 yet, no matter how crotchety or unassailable, who 

 possessed farm or garden, into whose management 

 his pride and care had largely entered, but enjoyed 

 seeing it admired. The eye of the world upon a 

 man's work is healthfully stimulative. He who 

 denies it, and plants for his solitary gratification only, 

 has a weak spot in his head or heart, and deserves to 

 go crazed in an island-garden. There are charming 

 places, so far as banks and trees and water view go, 

 along the far away shores of Long Island, but it is a 

 long day's journey to reach them over a road where 

 nobody travels. There are very grateful, inaccessible 

 nooks in Rockland County, where 



" A hermit hoar, in solemn cell," 



might wear out life's " evening gray," very jollily ; 

 but no man who wants his flowers to catch a new 

 tint from the reflected grace of fair faces,, wishes to 

 bury himself there. There are magnificent grazing 

 farms in the wilds of Greene County, great waves of 

 rolling hills, great Tors of shaggy, shaded cliff, great 

 wealth of brooks, purling amid the undulations of the 

 meadows, great rampant crests of forest growth, with 

 century-old hemlocks piling out of them their won- 

 drous pagodas of green ; but who wants the torture 

 of a drive over the Catskills to enjoy it all ? 

 Mr. Urban does not, neither do I. 



