2 MY FARM. 



" "Wanted A Farm, of not less than one hundred 

 acres, and within three hours of the city. It must 

 have a running stream, a southern or eastern slope, not 

 less than twenty acres in wood, and a water view." 



To this skeleton shape, it was easy, with only a 

 moderately active fancy, to supply the details of a 

 charming country home. Indeed, no kind of farm 

 work is more engaging, as I am led to believe, than 

 the imaginative labor of filling out a pleasant rural 

 picture, where the meadows are all lush with ver- 

 dure, the brooks murmuring with a contented babble, 

 cattle lazily grouped, that need no care, and flowers 

 opening, that know no culture. This kind of farm 

 work is not, to be sure, very profitable ; and yet, as 

 compared with a great deal of the gentleman-farm- 

 ing which I have had occasion to observe, I should 

 not regard it as extravagant. Perhaps it would not 

 be rash to put down here some of the pictures which 

 I conjured out of the advertisement. 



At times, it seemed to me that an answer might 

 come from some Arcadia lying upon the cove banks of 

 an inland river : the cove so land-bound as to seem like 

 a bit of Loch Lomond, into which the north shores sunk 

 with an easy slope, whose green turf reached to the 

 margin, and was spotted here and there with old and 

 mossy orcharding ; the west shore rose in a stiff bluff 



