springtime night, and a hundred perfumes mix in the fields and woods 
by night—then my farm is an Eden meet for angels’ visits. 
Here summer comes and sweats with toil of growing cabbages, and 
peas, and lettuce, and pears, and onions (that perfumery for the humble), 
and cherries, and strawberries. Now stop. Strawberries? Why didn't 
you come, friend, when my strawberries were ripe? I had tame and 
wild ones, though for me I like wild ones better. But any will do. 
And when the tenant’s cow gives cream instead of skimmed milk, and 
the strawberries are ripe and luscious—vwell, all I say is you had better 
happen around. And when summer gets down to hard work, and ripens 
the oats, and makes the corn grow so fast you can fairly see it grow if 
you stay half an hour, and turns wheatfields from green to gold, and 
makes my clover bloom, and has the sun work long hours and keep the 
stars out late o’ nights if they want to shine a spell—then summer is 
bewildering. 
And in autumn my vineyard is worth a voyage across the ocean to 
get to see. The beautiful leaf delicately contrived of Him who invented 
beauty, throws its shadow on purple clusters with an earlier frost on 
them than gathers on the housetops in October. Then I forget 
whether grapes are utilitarian or artistic, whether they should be eaten 
or looked at and wondered at. I love to see their abundance of cluster 
and loveliness, and am glad to own this farm; and when the leaves 
begin to weary of fluttering to the winds and fall through sheer idleness, 
and the elms grow yellow, and willow leaves have a jaundice look, and 
the ivies are glorious as skies of sunset, and every tree trunk they 
engirdle is ruby, as if it were not tree, but gem, and the maples blush 
and hang out scarlet banners, and oaks are gorgeous, and when the 
leaves rustle under your feet,—then | wish fall lasted twelve months. 
To kick around over your own leaves is to taste bliss; and I am 
haughty to own a farm. Winter, spring, summer and fall come here 
to enjoy themselves, and they are very welcome. 
In summer, when I lie, surcharged with indolence, down by my 
spring in the shadows, with the water standing in pools, and catching 
leaf and sky and cloud in its mirror, and holding them up like signals 
to the clouds sailing over my farm, life grows glad. We are a hos- 
pitable lot, the farm and the spring and I, and, like Abraham at his 
tent door, hail all who go along our way to stop and be sociable (all 
except the assessor. Not the farm, nor the spring, nor the ravine, 
nor the corn growing in rows or standing in shock, none of us nor all of 
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