124 MY FARM. 



And the dapper Somersetshire man, with his hat 

 defiantly on one side " Please God, and I think we 

 will, sir." 



I must do him the justice to say that he was 

 as good as his word. In looking over the scene 

 now, I find no straggling cedars, no scattered shoots 

 of elms ; the wayward elders, and the wild-cherries 

 save one protecting and orderly hedgerow along the 

 northern border of the farm are gone. The de- 

 crepid apple-trees are rooted up, or combed and 

 pruned into more promising shape. Ten-acre fields, 

 trim and true, are distributed over the meadow land, 

 and each, for the most part, has its single engrossing 

 crop. 



As I look out from my library window to-day 

 and the learned reader may guess the month from 

 my description I see one field reddened with the 

 lusty bloom of clover, which stands trembling in 

 its ranks, and which I greatly fear will be doubled 

 on its knees with the first rain storm ; another shows 

 the yellowish waving green of full-grown rye, sway- 

 ing and dimpling, and drifting as the idle winds 

 will ; another is half in barley and half in oats a 

 bristling green beard upon the first, the oats just 

 flinging out their fleecy, feathery tufts of blossom ; 

 upon another field, are deep dark lines beneath 

 which, in September, there are fair hopes of harvest- 



