WHERE I LIVED. 
91 
To enjoy these advantages I was ready to carry it on; 
like Atlas, to take the world on my shoulders,— I never 
heard what compensation he received for that, — and do 
all those things which had no other motive or excuse 
but that I might pay for it and be unmolested in my 
possession of it; for I knew all the while that it would 
yield the most abundant crop of the kind I wanted if I 
could only afford to let it alone. But it turned out as I 
have said. 
All that I could say, then, with respect to farming on 
a large scale, (I have always cultivated a garden,) was, 
that I had had my seeds ready. Many think that seeds 
improve with age. I have no doubt that time discrim¬ 
inates between the good and the bad; and when at last I 
shall plant, I shall be less likely to be disappointed. 
But I would say to my fellows, once for all, As long as 
possible live free and uncommitted. It makes but little 
difference whether you are committed to a farm or the 
county jail. 
Old Cato, whose “ De Be Bustica ” is my “ Cultiva¬ 
tor,” says, and the only translation I have seen makes 
sheer nonsense of the passage, “When you think of 
getting a farm, turn it thus in your mind, not to buy 
greedily; nor spare your pains to look at it, and do not 
think it enough to go round it once. The oftener you 
go there the more it will please you, if it is good.” I 
think I shall not buy greedily, but go round and round 
it as long as I live, and be buried in it first, that it may 
please me the more at last. 
The present was my next experiment of this kind, 
which I purpose to describe more at length; for con- 
