30 MY FARM. 



horizon, is a very different thing from that bold, 

 broadside, every-day nearness, which outroars all the 

 pleasant land sounds, making your country quietude 

 a mere fiction, and the broad presence of ocean the 

 engrossing reality. So it was with the place of which 

 I speak ; beside this, the slope was slight and 

 gradual only one billowy lift as if the land had 

 some time caught the undulations of the sea after 

 some heavy ground swell, and kept the uplift after 

 the sea had settled to its fair-weather proportions. 

 The brook was of an unnoticeable flow, that idled 

 from a neighbor's grounds, and the wood, such as it 

 was, only a spur of silver poplars that had stolen 

 through from the same neighbor's territory, and had 

 shot up into a white and tangled wilderness. 



The occupant and owner of the place of may be 

 seventy acres was one of those wiry, energetic, rest- 

 less young men of New England stock, thrifty, 

 shrewd, spurning all courtesies, bound to push on in 

 life ; a type of that nervous unrest by which God has 

 peopled the West and California. Never gaining, 

 but always despising, the calm that comes of satisfied 

 endeavor, whether in the establishment of a home, or 

 the accumulation of money, these fast ones are very 

 confident in their ability withal, and in their judg- 

 ment ; making light of difficulties, full of contempt 

 for all knowledge which has not shown practical and 



