66 MY FARM. 



trial of country life, even if I had possessed the 

 means to give it expression, I had also no desire to 

 give over all plans of management to a bailiff, how- 

 ever shrewd. The greatest charm of a country life 

 seems to me to spring from that familiarity with the 

 land, and its capabilities, which can come only from 

 minute personal observation, or the successive devel- 

 opments of one's own methods of culture. I can 

 admire a stately crop wherever I see it ; but if I have 

 directed the planting, and myself applied the dress- 

 ing, and am testing my own method of tillage, I 

 look upon it with a far keener relish. Every week it 

 unfolds a charm ; if it puts on a lusty dark green, I 

 see that it is taking hold upon the fertilizers ; if it 

 yellows in the cool nights, and grows pale, I bethink 

 me if I will not put off the planting for a week in the 

 season to come ; if it curl overmuch in the heats 

 of later June, I reckon up the depth of my plough- 

 ing ; and when the spindles begin to peep out from 

 their green sheaths day after day, and lift up, and 

 finally from their feathery fingers shake down pollen 

 upon the silk nestling coyly below, I see in it all a 

 modest promise to me repeated in every shower 

 of the golden ears that shall by and by stand blazing 

 in the October sunshine. 



But all this only answers negatively my question 

 of what to do with the Farm ? 



