OLD STONE WALLS 65 



ing moving things. Of all our animals, no other 

 has so much of contact with human life and of the 

 poetry of the ages as the dairy cow. Secondly, 

 this farm must lie in the Hill-Country so that for 

 the boy there may be rocks to climb and woodlands 

 to explore and little ravines to wander in and 

 great peaceful hills to which he may lift up his 

 eyes and purple distances across which to gaze. 

 And thirdly, this farm must be in the old agricul- 

 tural East with a continuity of history — a farm 

 to which has come the glory of the years, where 

 men and women have lived and wrought out their 

 lives and been gathered to their fathers. There is 

 in truth something stirring, something epic, in 

 the pioneer setting up his home on the forefront 

 of civilization. I am told that men come at length 

 to love the limitless prarie and its clear distances 

 and its blowing air. But when I see my ideal farm 

 it is always with bams and drowsy cows, and it 

 will lie in the lap of the valley where the summits 

 of the hills are wooded and blue and far away, and 

 it will be an old farm so that the folk who dwell 

 there will speak of things in terms of generations 

 instead of years. And I confess that while good 

 farming bids us have new bams that are white 

 within and gleaming with paint without, yet I love 

 old spreading bams with swallows under the eaves 

 and colonies of doves within the gables. And I 

 like farm-houses, good sized and suggestive of 

 generous life but not too spick and span. For all 



