climbing up the thing and sliding down the thing a good many times, | 
am firmly convinced that I own in the neighborhood of one hundred and 
sixty acres; and this increase in my estate is wholly attributable to the 
steep incline. To own a hill seems to me the acme of desire. Aspira- 
tion blooms out on hills, and besides so situated, | need not migrate 
with the birds to get the seasons, or summer or winter residence. All 
I need do is to toil up the hill, or slide down it. At one extremity, viz., 
the hill, I call the habitation there erected Quaylecliff, and the residence 
erected at the base of the hill I call Quaylecroft. Now, could a man 
owning a level farm, every foot of which is tillable, have so economical, 
and yet so delightful arrangement, or coin such names for his vernacu- 
lar? Evidently he could not. The flat farm owner may have larger 
crops and may in consequence get some rent, and moreover, his land 
may stay where it was put with more tenacity; but these are inconse- 
quential matters when compared with the legitimate aristocracy of 
possessing such names as ‘‘cliff’’ and ‘‘croft.’’ Now these localities 
are on my farm and have been for several years. They go with the 
place. [| own one hundred and sixty acres (or close to that), of spring, 
summer, autumn, winter. I do not wish to boast. Vanity is not natural 
tome. I have not been accused of a predisposition to braggadocio, but 
do confess that when | consider how sections of the four seasons are 
mine to rent, loan, or sell, | am with difficulty restrained from a little 
Falstaffian swagger, not to say lying. Sometime, I fear, when off 
guard, I shall be guilty of both; but the provocation will, to my thought, 
justify. 
This farm has had a fine diversity of tenants since | have been 
paying taxes on it. Variety is the spice (allspice, also pepper), of 
farming. | detest the humdrum of changelessness, and have suffered 
nothing from ennui from this cause since becoming proud possessor of 
this estate. My first tenant was an Ethiopian. He was a good man, 
and religious, and his wife raised turkeys, and he had a family great for 
multitude, but his wife had—in some calamity prior to coming to my 
farm—lost one of her bodily supports, and so chased her family over 
my farm on one leg. Now this condition irritated my sense of female 
grace. Woman is a biped © This woman was a uniped. Such a con- 
dition was contrary to nature; and a farmer must not go in the face of 
nature any more than in the face of Providence. I say no more. The 
next renter was, in the vernacular, a Dutchman. He was a brave 
horse trader, and set posts for my vineyard, and possessed much suavity 
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