GRADES AND LEVELS 49 
extravagances than any other in which a man 
may indulge. And it afflicts all sorts of men. 
Thomas Jefferson spent ten years in leveling a 
space eight or ten acres in extent on the top of 
the mountain where he built his home; and the 
sages of a village whereof I wot have this 
year graded to a level the entire town. Tons 
of earth from the broad tops of gentle knolls 
have been laboriously hauled upon the gracious 
curves of equally gentle depressions — a feat 
that has dressed many of the roacls with rich 
top soil and left much of the land stripped to 
its barren clay subsoil and as incapable as stone 
of supporting vegetation; while the trees 
everywhere, on both upland and lowland, have 
been killed, and the entire section has been 
robbed of its character and the claims to beauty 
and distinction which it once enjoyed. 
It seems to me that neither Mr. Jefferson 
nor the authorities of this town could have 
stopped to think; yet a hundred years and more 
have intervened, and this age should know 
better if the other did not. But the endeavor 
has always been and is to change what creation 
itself has done with the earth. It seems to be 
impossible for the majority of human beings to 
look at a hillside with an eye to building a 
house thereon, without immediately beginning 
