remembers what fruit is expected of it, and that, though customary, is 
very, very strange. God made it so. How else? 
Sauntering across the gentle slopes of my farm down in the croft 
(for I have gentle slopes sedate as middle age—not all the farm is 
a jump up and fall down) is a ravine, which spring rains have digged 
deep, until it is deep enough to hide a man on horseback, even if horse 
and man were Kentucky bred. A ravine, with trees growing in it and 
on its edge, is poetry if one knows enough to know poetry when it is 
written in prose form. This ravine lacks only one thing to make me 
love it to excess. As it is I love it quite enough to satisfy an exacting 
affection. The ravine lacks water, that is its omission which alone pre- 
vents it from perfection of beauty. But not to dwell on lacks, which 
would be a breach of courtesy, notice how knowingly the ravine jogs 
and zigzags, as if possessed of all the field; how it beats back on itself, 
as having forgotten something; how it makes spaces shut from winter 
winds, where birds find covert; here saplings and trees of sweet sixteen 
climb up the bank, or lean over the edges, or stand on the bank, as 
guarding a secret, or stand in the bottom of the ravine, like lads knee 
deep in summer streams. How the wild grapevine trails with its inde- 
scribable grace from tree to tree, and tosses out long tendrils to float to 
and fro with the incoming and outgoing tides of air! You shall see this 
ravine in the picture, and | take pride (albeit a religious pride) in call- 
ing attention to the fact that this ravine grows on my farm. If I can 
ever get money (the time seems strangely remote at this writing) I will 
dig a well and erect a windmill, and build a waterfall in this ravine, and 
plant cress along the watercourse, and have a lily pond at the far side 
where my ravine steps off my farm with hesitant step, as disinclined 
to go. In one thing I am inflexible with my hale friend, the renter, 
namely, that no limb be cut or broken from the trees, nor any briers 
be cut, nor any golden-rod dug from the banks of this ravine. And, 
withal, how the ravine thrives under my ownership. I am proud of its 
delight in my partiality. Each year the place grows in beauty and 
tangle of growth, as if eager to please me. Whether or not I am a 
success at raising corn and potatoes I can raise a fine ravine, which, 
to my mind, requires much more ability than the production of potatoes 
and corn. 
Have you, my friend, have you the topography of my farm clearly in 
your mind? The hill-top where we saw the sea on the far south and the 
bewildering beauty of hills and orchard and harvest field and woods 
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