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CHAPTER XVI. 
THE RENOVATION OF OLD PLACES. 
W HATEVER objection may be urged against buying 
and renovating old houses, will not apply to the 
purchase of ground stocked with old trees and 
shrubs. Many a rickety, neglected place, is filled 
with choice old materials, which, with small expenditures in clear¬ 
ing away the superfluities, and polishing the lawn, will group at 
once into pleasing pictures. Such neglected places may be com¬ 
pared with a head of luxuriant hair all uncombed and disorderly, 
which needs but to be clean and arranged with taste to become 
a crown of beauty to the wearer. 
Old yards are generally filled with mature trees of choice 
species, but so huddled together, and filled in with lank neglected 
shrubs and tangled grass, that one observes only the shiftlessness 
and disorder, and turns with greater pleasure to look upon a 
polished lawn with not a tree upon it:—as in music a single note 
given purely and clearly is more pleasing than the greatest variety 
of sounds making discords together. But a week’s work among 
