nothing to be undone everything was to be done. It was not exactly a virgin soil, but, like a lovely widow, it had lain fallow—a friendly farmer made use of that word-so long, that it would be grateful for the touch of a rake or a hoe. There was no garden, no fence, no orchard, and no fruit-trees of any kind except one apple-tree, but then the nurseries and a little labor would make this right.

An unpleasant suspicion crossed my mind that perhaps it would have been better if some of these things had been done to my hand, and that possibly I was not exactly the man to do them in the best way; but a second perusal of "Ten Acres Enough" was enough for me, and these absurd doubts were banished forever. If an uneducated mechanic could leave Philadelphia, rescue a decaying farm, and make it splendidly remunerative, why could not an educated lawyer from New York convert an uninjured farm into the eighth or ninth-we Americans have added a few to them-wonder of the world?

The affair was as simple as could be. With a classbook of botany, a recipe from Professor Mapes, a few cuttings of some wonderful new berry-of which, doubtless, there were plenty, and Bridgman's "Gardener's Assistant," the result was certain. It was merely a question of seeds, weeds, and manure-the

first and last to be encouraged, and the other to be eradicated.

After all, what is the wonderful science in farming? You put a seed in the ground, and it comes up—that is, if it does come up—either a pea or a bean, a carrot or a turnip, and, with your best skill and greatest learning, you can not plant a pea and induce it to come up a bean, or convert a carrot into a turnip. As for planting, any fool can do that, and as for making it grow, the wisest man in the land can not effect it. These and a few other similar arguments were entirely conclusive, and soon visions of the accomplished fact engrossed my mind.

I should have a neat, modest, small, but cosy little house; square, for economy's sake, but surrounded on all sides by a deep piazza; the garden should be filled with delicious vegetables, fruits, and berries, the earliest and best of their kinds; there should be a magnificent bed of asparagus-that king of the kitchen garden-a dozen long rows of strawberries, with fruit as luscious as a young girl's lips; Bartlett pears, early peas, peaches and cream-the latter only indirectly vegetable-cauliflowers, tomatoes, mushrooms, lettuce-every thing, in fact, that a gentleman eats when he can get it, and nothing that he eschews when he can do no better. The residue of the farm

was to be partly orchard and partly market garden, and this was to supply the family during the winter and pay the expenses of the household.

It is an immense satisfaction, of a hot evening in summer, even in the prematurely scorching days of June, to leave the city, after a long day of labor and trouble, and, rushing away with railroad speed into the country, to enjoy the delicious air and cool breeze, to sit beneath the outspreading trees, to wander through the woods, to bathe in the brook, to doze or smoke in the shade. The scent of the blossoms or the hay, or no smell at all, is such an exquisite relief from the customary odors of New York streets. The sun seems to lose half and the air to gain double its ordinary power. The pleasures are so innocent, the matters of interest so pure, the mind is braced but not wearied. The garden, whether kitchen or flower garden-those delightful adjuncts of a country place is such an infinite source of health, improvement, and delight. Man, confined to the city by dire necessity of money-making, recognizing the country as the natural sphere of his existence, dreams of a neat, quiet, retired country place, and books such as "Ten Acres Enough" persuade him to convert these dreams into realities.

I had always been troubled with similar visions,

although by a strange fatality my education in country matters had been wofully neglected, for I could hardly distinguish tomato-vines from egg-plants, and had not the remotest notion of modes or seasons of planting; but, now that there was a possibility that these imaginings might be realized, I was so charmed, that I resolved to record my experiences for the guidance and instruction of others. Thus it came about that this work was written; and if it is occasionally defective in style and irregular in plan, it is probably not more so than was my farming.