W'' 
 
 / 
 
 n 
 
F 10 i 
 , /v; t. 
 
Pictures of Edgewood. 
 
T 
 
 Eoalwood Pilot 
 
 
 
 869 Broadway N.Y. 
 
 
 
 ' ^ 
 
 
 *=- 
 
 
 
 i 
 
I 
 
 
PICTURES OF EDGEWOOD 
 
 IN 
 
 A SERIES OF PHOTOGRAPHS, 
 
 BT ROCKtFOOD, 
 
 AND 
 
 Illustrative Text, 
 
 BY THE AUTHOR OF “MY FARM OF EDGEWOOD.’ 
 
 NEW YORK: 
 
 CHARLES SCRIBNER AND COMPANY. 
 1869. 
 
'Entered, according to Act of Congress, in the year 1868, 
 
 By OHAEBES SCRIBNERI AND’.COMPANY, 
 
 In the Clerk’s Oflace of the District Court of the United States for the Southern District of New York. 
 
 56352 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 Introductory, ..... 9 
 
 I. Approach from the North, . . *13 
 
 II. View down the Lawn, .... 25 
 
 III. View from Lawn of Bee-house and Edge of 
 
 Wood, . . . . .33 
 
 IV. View toward Village from Front, . . 39 
 
 V. View of Farm-house, . . . -41 
 
 VI. Down the Garden, . . . .51 
 
 VII. View from Hill over Farm-flat, . . -59 
 
 VIII. Looking toward Harbor, ... 63 
 
 IX. Entrance to Edgewood Road, . . -65 
 
 2 
 

 
 
 :• 
 
 
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS. 
 
 FACING 
 
 1. Portrait, ..... Frontispiece. 
 
 2. Edgewood : Approach from the North, . . 13 
 
 3. Map of Edgewood Farm, ... 19 
 
 4. Edgewood Homestead, at date of purchase, . . 22 
 
 5. Down the Lawn, from South Porch, . . 25 
 
 6. Edgewood Homestead, 1868, . . .30 
 
 7. Edge of the Wood and Bee-house, . . 33 
 
 8. West Rock and Village, from East Door, . . 39 
 
 9. New Farm-house, ..... 41 
 
 10. Garden Gate, . . . . . .52 
 
 11. Farm-level and Rear of House, from Edgewood Road, 59 
 
 12. Looking toward the Sound, from South Door, . 63 
 
 13. Opening of Edgewood Road, ... 65 
 

 
PICTURES OF EDGEWOOD. 
 
 T hat the owner of a farm, which for thirteen years has 
 made for him a quiet country-home, should feel strong 
 interest in its trees, its grassy surface, and its views, and 
 believe them all very charming and worthy of admiration, is, I 
 think, most natural; and though I have not the presumption to 
 suppose that the public at large will show the same interest in 
 such common affairs, yet I have found the views of Mr. 
 Rockwood so capitally done, that I have ventured to bind them 
 up in this little book—of which only three hundred copies are 
 printed—in the belief that they will meet a kindly reception 
 from those who were entertained by the previous account of the 
 Farm of Edgewood, as well as by those who, with country-homes 
 of their own, are never tired of comparing their own improve¬ 
 ments with the improvements of their neighbors. 
 
 Edgewood is in no sense a model farm; nor have I endeavored 
 to make it such. Indeed, for several years I have given over to 
 other and experienced parties the agricultural management of such 
 portions as required systematic tillage, reserving only the hills and 
 
lo Pictures of Edgewood. 
 
 woods. I have sought chiefly to make an enjoyable and inexpen¬ 
 sive country-home, where crops, if cultivated, should pay at least 
 the full cost of production — where children should have ample and 
 free range — where tree-planting could be carried on year by year 
 without interference with farm-culture; and by thinning of the 
 forest-growth, and opening roads to portions previously inaccess¬ 
 ible, I have sought to prepare the property for such final uses as its 
 situation, near to the city, and within hearing of its bells and full 
 sight of its spires, seemed to suggest. Little or no labor has been 
 given to nicely gravelled walks, or to the rearing of exotics; nor 
 has there been any expenditure architecturally further than the 
 absolute wants of the farm have demanded. 
 
 The lesson which, most of all, I have sought to teach — and 
 every man’s experience of thirteen years upon a country-place 
 ought to teach something — has been this : that very many charms 
 of a country-home can be compassed by very simple means, and that 
 a large array of what are termed landscape beauties can be secured 
 without conflict with the economic management of the farm. 
 Neither grading, nor terracing, nor rare plants, nor extravagant 
 drainage are essential to the attainment of those beauties and those 
 beatitudes of country-life which will wear and win day by day and 
 year after year. It is amazing what can be wrought in this way 
 upon a slatternly farm, by simple readjustment of enclosures, of 
 crops, and of trees. A little deft handling of screening shrubbery 
 or vines will shed grace over the roughest portions, and care, and 
 manuring, and rolling, and a thicket or two of native wood, will 
 straightway turn the old home-patch of meadow into a lawn where 
 
Introductory. 
 
 I 
 
 the children may frolic, and the trees lay their quaint shadows night 
 and morning. 
 
 Two or three ground-plans of the farm — or of such portions as 
 are contiguous to the house — have been introduced, in the hope 
 of giving a more clear conception of the character of the improve¬ 
 ments which have been undertaken, and of the changes which have 
 been wrought. In one of these, the more extended views have been 
 indicated; and in another, those special scenes which are the 
 subjects of the photographic prints. In connection with these 
 latter as they severally appear, I have introduced such passages 
 from the book previously alluded to (Farm of Edgewood) as should 
 serve in a measure to explain them, and to revive the interest of 
 those who were good enough to find entertainment in that earlier 
 record of my farm-experience. 
 


 
 ,ii 
 
 I 
 
 •j 
 
 1 
 
 i 
 
/ 
 
APPROACH FROM THE NORTH. 
 
 T his view is from a point beside the highway, and—like 
 all the others — was taken in the month of May, when 
 there was but scant leafage upon the trees. It gives a 
 hint of that awkward nearness to the public road which belonged 
 to very many old farm-houses of its date; and yet, by reason of 
 the quiet of the road, and a belt of encircling shrubbery, the griev¬ 
 ance is reduced to very small limits. 
 
 I quote the story of my first visit to this locality — of the 
 circumstances of the purchase, and a brief description of the house, 
 which has not been changed in its exterior aspect since that day. 
 
 “ One after another the hopes I had built upon my hatful of 
 responses, failed me. June was bursting every day into fuller and 
 more tempting leafiness. The stifling corridors of city hotels, the 
 mouldy smell of country taverns, the dependence upon testy Jehus, 
 who plundered and piloted me through all manner of out-of-the- 
 way places, became fatiguing beyond measure. 
 
 “ And it was precisely at this stage of my inquiry, that I hap¬ 
 pened accidentally to be passing a day at the Tontine inn, of the 
 charming city of N—h—. (I use initials only, in way of respectful 
 
14 
 
 Pictures of Edgewood. 
 
 courtesy for the home of my adoption.) The old drowsy quietude 
 of the place which I had known in other days, still lingered upon 
 the broad green, while the mimic din of trade rattled down the 
 tidy streets, or gave tongue in the shrill whistle of an engine. 
 The college still seemed dreaming out its classic beatitudes, and 
 the staring rectangularity of its enclosures and buildings and paths 
 seemed to me only a proper expression of its old geometric and 
 educational traditions. 
 
 “ Most people know this town of which I speak, only as a 
 scudding whirl of white houses, succeeded by a foul sluiceway, that 
 runs along the reeking backs of shops, and ends presently in gloom. 
 A stranger might consider it the darkness of a tunnel, if he did 
 not perceive that the railway-train had stopped, and presently catch 
 faint images of a sooty stairway, begrimed with smoke, up and 
 down which dim figures pass to and fro, and from the foot of which, 
 and the side of which, and all around which, a score of belching 
 voices break out in a passionate chorus of shouts: as the eye gains 
 upon the sootiness and gloom, it makes out the wispy, wavy lines 
 of a few whips moving back and forth amid the uproar of voices; 
 it lights presently upon the star of a policeman, who seems alto¬ 
 gether in his element in the midst of the hurly-burly. Becloaked 
 and shawled figures enter and pass through the carriages; they 
 may be black, or white, or gray, or kinsfolk — you see nothing but 
 becloaked figures passing through ; portmanteaus fall with a slump, 
 and huge dressing-cases fall with a slam, upon what seems, by the 
 ear, to be pavement; luggage-trucks keep up an . uneasy rattle; 
 brakemen somewhere in still lower depths strike dinning blows 
 
Approach from the North. 
 
 15 
 
 upon the wheels, to test their soundness; newsboys, moving about 
 the murky shades like piebald imps, lend a shrill treble to the 
 uproar; the policeman’s star twinkles somewhere in the foreground, 
 upon the begrimed stairway, figures flit mysteriously up and down, 
 there is the shriek of a steam-whistle somewhere in the front; a 
 shock to the train; a new deluge of smoke rolls back and around 
 newsboys, police, cabmen, stairway, and all; there is a crazy shout 
 of some official, a jerk, a dash — figures still flitting up and down 
 the sooty stairway — and so, a progress into day (which seemed 
 never more welcome). Again the backs of shops, of houses, heaps 
 of debris, as if all the shop-people and all the dwellers in all the 
 houses were fed only on lobsters and other shellfish; a widening of 
 the sluice, a gradual recovery of position to the surface of the 
 ground — in time to see a few tall chimneys, a great hulk of rock, 
 with something glistening on its summit, a turbid river bordered 
 with sedges, a clump of coquettish pine-trees — and the conductor 
 tells you all this is the beautiful city of N—h—. 
 
 ‘‘ The natural impression of a stranger would be, that the city 
 was situated upon a considerable eminence, which had required deep 
 boring for the proper adjustment of levels. The impression would 
 be an unjust one ; in all that dreary sink of a station, there is no 
 height involved except the height of corporate niggardliness.* The 
 town is as level as Runnimede. 
 
 * With a spasm of liberality, the authorities have latterly opened upon this 
 railroad-station one or two sunken windows, so that it may now be regarded as 
 one of the best-lighted cellars in this country; and if its capacity were equal 
 to the housing of more than two cars, it would be more tolerable than it is. 
 
i6 
 
 Pictures of Edgewood. 
 
 “A friend called upon me shortly after my arrival, and learning 
 the errand upon which I had been scouring no inconsiderable tract 
 of country, proposed to me to linger a day more, and take a drive 
 about the suburbs. I willingly complied with his invitation; 
 though I must confess that my idea of the suburbs, colored as 
 it was by old recollections of college-walks over dead stretches of 
 level, in order to find some quiet copse, where I might bandy screams 
 with a bluejay, in rehearsal of some college theme — all this, I say, 
 moderated my expectations. 
 
 “ It seems but yesterday that I drove from among the tasteful 
 houses of the town, which since my boy-time had crept far out upon 
 the margin of the plain. It seems to me that I can recall the note 
 of an oriole, that sang gushingly from the limbs of an overreaching 
 elm as we passed. I know I remember the stately, broad road we 
 took, and its smooth, firm macadam. I have a fancy that I com¬ 
 pared it in my own mind, and not unfavorably, with the metal of 
 a road which I had driven over only two months before in the 
 environs of Liverpool. I remember a somewhat stately country- 
 house that we passed, whose architecture dissolved any illusions I 
 might have been under in regard to my whereabouts. I remember 
 turning slightly, perhaps to the right, and threading the ways 
 of a neat little manufacturing village, — catching views of water¬ 
 falls, of tall chimneys, of open pasture-grounds; and remember 
 bridges, and other bridges, and how the village straggled on with 
 its neat white palings and whiter houses, with honeysuckles at the 
 doors; and how we skirted a pond, where the pads of lilies lay all 
 idly afloat; and how a great hulk of rock loomed up suddenly near 
 
Approach from the North. 17 
 
 a thousand feet, with dwarfed cedars and oaks tufting its crevices, 
 tufting its top, and how we drove almost beneath it, so that I 
 seemed to be in Meyringen again, and to hear the dash of the 
 foaming Reichenbach; and how we ascended again, drifting through 
 another limb of the village, where the little churches stood; and 
 how we sped on past neat white houses, — rising gently, — skirted by 
 hedgerows of tangled cedars, and presently stopped before a grayish- 
 white farmhouse, where the air was all aflow with the perfume of 
 great purple spikes of lilacs. And thence—though we had risen so 
 little I had scarce noticed a hill—we saw all the spires of the city 
 we had left, two miles away as a bird flies, and they seemed to stand 
 cushioned on a broad bower of leaves; and to the right of them, 
 where they straggled and faded, there came to the eye a white burst 
 of water which was an arm of the sea; beyond the harbor and town 
 was a purple hazy range of hills, — in the foreground a little 
 declivity, and then a wide plateau of level land, green and lusty 
 with all the wealth of June sunshine. I had excuse to be fastidious 
 in the matter of landscape, for within three months I had driven on 
 Richmond hill, and had luxuriated in the valley-scene from the cote 
 of St. Cloud. But neither one nor the other forbade my open and 
 outspoken admiration of the view before me. 
 
 “ I have a recollection of making my way through the hedging 
 lilacs, and ringing with nervous haste at the door-bell; and as I 
 turned, the view from the step seemed to me even wider and more 
 enchanting than from the carriage. I have a fancy that a middle- 
 aged man, with iron-gray whiskers, answered my summons in his 
 shirt-sleeves, and proposed joining me directly under some trees 
 
Pictures of Edgewood. 
 
 which stood a little way to the north. I recollect dimly a little 
 country coquetry of his, about unwillingness to sell, or to name a 
 price; and yet how he kindly pointed out to me the farm-lands, 
 which lay below upon the flat, and the valley where his cows 
 were feeding, just southward, and how the hills rolled up grandly 
 westward, and were hemmed in to the north by a heavy belt of 
 timber. 
 
 “ I think we are all hypocrites at a bargain. I suspect I threw 
 out casual objections to the house, and the distance, and the rough¬ 
 ness ; and yet have an uneasy recollection of thanking my friend 
 for having brought to my notice the most charming spot I had yet 
 seen, and one which met my wish in nearly every particular. 
 
 “ It seems to me that the ride to town must have been very 
 short, and my dinner a hasty one ’: I know I have a clear recollec¬ 
 tion of wandering over those hills, and that plateau of farm-land, 
 afoot, that very afternoon. I remember tramping through the 
 wood, and testing the turf after the manner of my lank friend upon 
 the Hudson. I can recall distinctly the aspect of house, and hills, 
 as they came into view on my second drive from the town; how a 
 great stretch of forest, which lay in common, flanked the whole, so 
 that the farm could be best and most intelligibly described as — 
 lying on the edge of the wood; and it seemed to me, that, if it 
 should be mine, it should wear the name of --Edgewood. 
 
 “ It is the name it bears now. I will not detail the means by 
 which the coyness of my iron-gray-haired friend was won over to a 
 sale; it is enough to tell that within six weeks from the day on 
 which I had first sighted the view, and brushed through the lilac- 
 
1 -^ 
 
 k 
 
 i 
 
 P 
 
 rr' 
 
pftSTURE 
 
 'blackbernI^ 
 
 
 PUBLIC HIGHWAY 
 
 . ^1 OF THAT PORTION OF 
 
 *Shmvmfflhp Conroe of 
 
 &Lm CO 7/s/fo/iDmrMy. 
 
Approach from the North. 
 
 19 
 
 hedge at the door, the place, from having been the home of another, 
 had become a home of mine, and a new stock of Lares was bloom¬ 
 ing in the Atrium. 
 
 “ In the disposition of the landscape, and in the breadth of the 
 land, there was all, and more than I had desired. There was an 
 eastern slope where the orchard lay, which took the first burst of 
 the morning, and the first warmth of Spring; there was another 
 valley-slope southward from the door, which took the warmth of 
 the morning, and which keeps the sun till night. There was a 
 wood, in which now the little ones gather anemones in Spring, and 
 in autumn, heaping baskets of nuts. There was a strip of sea in 
 sight, on which I can trace the white sails, as they come and go, 
 without leaving my library-chair; and each night I see the flame of 
 a lighthouse kindled, and its reflection dimpled on the water. If 
 the brook is out of sight, beyond the hills, it has its representative 
 in the fountain that is gurgling and plashing at my door. 
 
 “Although possessing all the special requisites of which I had 
 been in search, yet the farm was by no means without its inaptitudes 
 and roughnesses. There was an accumulation of half-decayed logs 
 in one quarter, of mouldering chips in another, — being monu¬ 
 mental of the choppings and hewings of half a score of years. Old 
 iron had its establishment in this spot; cast-away carts and sleds in 
 that; walls which had bulged out with the upheaval of — I know 
 not how many—frosts, had been ingeniously mended with discarded 
 harrows or axles; there was the usual debris of clam-shells, and 
 there were old outbuildings standing awry, and showing rhomboidal 
 angles in their outline. These approached the house very nearly,— 
 
20 
 
 Pictures of Edgewood. 
 
 so nearly, in fact, that in one direction at least it was difficult to say 
 where the province of the poultry and calves ended, and where the 
 human occupancy began. 
 
 “ There was a monstrous growth of dock and burdock about 
 the outer doors, and not a few rank shoots of that valuable medi¬ 
 cinal herb—stramonium. There were the invariable clumps of 
 purple lilacs, in most unmanageable positions; a few straggling 
 bunches of daffodils; an ancient garden with its measly-looking, 
 mossy gooseberries; a few strawberry-plants, and currant-bushes 
 keeping up interruptedly the pleasant formality of having once 
 been set in rows, and of having nodded their crimson tassels at each 
 other across the walk. There were some half-dozen huge old pear- 
 trees, immediately in the rear of the house, mossy, and promising 
 inferior native fruit; but full of a vigor that I have since had the 
 pleasure of transmuting into golden Bartletts. There were a few 
 plum-trees, loaded with black knot; a score of peach-trees in out- 
 of-the-way places, all showing unfortunate marks of that vegetable 
 jaundice, the yellows, which throughout New England is the bane 
 of this delicious fruit. 
 
 “ There was the usual huge barn, a little wavy in its ridge, and 
 with an aged settle to its big doors; while under the eaves were 
 jagged pigeon-holes, cut by adventurous boys, ignorant of cur¬ 
 vilinear harmonies. Upon the peak was a lively weathercock of 
 shingle, most preposterously active in its motions, and trimming to 
 every flaw of wind with a nervous rapidity, that reminded me of 
 nothing so much as of the alacrity of a small-newspaper editor. 
 There was the attendant company of farm-sheds, low sheds, high 
 
Approach from the North. 
 
 21 
 
 sheds, tumble-down sheds, one v/ith a motley array of seasoned 
 lumber, well dappled over with such domestic coloring as barn-yard 
 fowls are in the habit of administering; another, with sleds and 
 sleighs,—looking out of place in June, — and submitted to the same 
 domestic garniture. There was the cider-mill with its old casks, 
 and press, seamy and mildewed, both having musty taint. A 
 convenient mossy cherry-tree was hung over with last year’s scythes 
 and bush-hooks, while two or three broken ox-chains trailed from 
 the stump of a limb which had suffered amputation. Nor must I 
 forget the shop, half home-made, half remnant of something better, 
 with an old hat or two thrust into the broken sashes — with its 
 unhelved, gone-by axes, its hoes with half their blade gone, its 
 dozen of infirm rakes, its hospital-shelf for broken swivels, heel- 
 wedges, and dried balls of putty. 
 
 “ I remember passing a discriminating eye over the tools, be¬ 
 thinking me how I would swing the broadaxe, or put the saws to 
 sharp service; for in bargaining for the farm 1 had also bargained 
 for those implements of which there might be immediate need. 
 
 “ Directly upon the roadway, before the house, rose a high wall, 
 supporting the little terrace that formed the front yard; the terrace 
 was a wilderness of roses, lilacs, and undipped box. The entrance 
 was by a flight of stone steps which led through the middle of the 
 terrace, and of the wall; while over the steps hung the remnants of 
 an ancient archway, which had once supported a gilded lantern; and 
 I was told, with an air of due reverence, that this gilded spangle of 
 the town-life was a memento of the hospitalities of a certain warm¬ 
 blooded West Indian, who in gone-by years had lighted up the 
 
22 
 
 Pictures of Edgewood. 
 
 country-home with cheery festivities. I would have cherished the 
 lantern if it had not long before disappeared; and the steps that 
 may have once thronged under it, must be all of them heavy with 
 years now, if they have not rested from their weary beat altogether. 
 Both wall and terrace are now gone, and a gentle swell of green turf 
 is in their place, skirted by a hedge and low rustic paling, and 
 crowned by a gaunt pine-tree* and a bowering elm. 
 
 “ The same hospitable occupant, to whom I have referred, had 
 made additions to the home itself, so as to divest it of the usual 
 stereotyped farm-house look, by a certain quaintness of outline. 
 This he had done by extending the area of the lower story some ten 
 feet, in both front and rear, while the roof of this annex was con¬ 
 cealed by a heavy balustrade, perched upon the eaves — thus giving 
 the effect of one large cube, surmounted by a lesser one; the upper¬ 
 most was topped with a roof of sharp pitch, through whose ridge 
 protruded two enormous chimney-stacks. But this alteration was 
 of so old a date as not to detract from the venerable air of the 
 house. Even the jaunty porch, which jutted in front of all, showed 
 gaping seams, and stains of ancient leakage, that forbade any sus¬ 
 picion of newness. 
 
 “Within, the rooms had that low-browed look which belongs to 
 country farm-houses; and I will not disguise the matter by pre- 
 
 *On a night of great storm, in February, 1868, this ancient pine was blown 
 down, and fell with a great crash upon the elm. Ten feet farther to the west¬ 
 ward would have brought it lumbering upon the decrepid roof, under which two 
 little curly-pated ones lay coiled in slumber. As a monument of the escape, I 
 have left the bole of the old pine fixed—as it fell — in a cleft of the elm. 
 
E3 XD O E’VST O O ID H O UVE E S T E ^ ID 
 At Date of Purchase. 
 
Approach from the North. 
 
 23 
 
 tending that they are any higher now. I have occasional visitors 
 whom I find it necessary to caution as they pass under the door¬ 
 ways ; and the stray wasps that will float into the open casements of 
 so old a country-house, in the first warm days of Spring, are not 
 out of reach of my boy, (just turned of five,) as he mounts a 
 chair, and makes a cut at them with his dog-whip, upon the 
 ceiling. 
 
 ‘‘ I must confess that I do not dislike this old humility of 
 house-building. If windows, open chimney-places, and situation 
 give good air, what matters it that your quarters by night are three 
 or four feet nearer to your quarters by day ? In summer, if some 
 simple trellised pattern of paper cover the ceiling, you enjoy the 
 illusion of a low-branching bower; and of a winter evening, the 
 play of the firelight on the hearth flashes over it, with a kindly near¬ 
 ness. 
 
 “ I know the outgoing parties found no pleasant task in the 
 leave-taking. I am sure the old lady who was its mistress felt a 
 pang that was but poorly concealed; I have a recollection that on 
 one of my furtive visits of observation, I unwittingly came upon 
 her — at a stand-still over some bit of furniture that was to be pre¬ 
 pared for the cart—with her handkerchief fast to her eyes. It 
 cannot be otherwise at parting with even the lowliest homes, where 
 we have known of deaths, and births, and pleasures, and little 
 storms that have had their sweep and lull; and, where slow-pacing 
 age has declared itself in gray hair and the bent figure. It is tear¬ 
 ing leaf on leaf out of the thin book where our lives are written. 
 
 “ Even the farmer’s dog slipped around the angles of the house. 
 
24 
 
 Pictures of Edgewood. 
 
 as the change was going forward, with a fitful, frequent, uneasy trot, 
 as if he were disposed to make the most of the last privileges of his 
 home. The cat alone, of all the living occupants, took matters 
 composedly, and paced eagerly about from one to another of her 
 disturbed haunts in buttery and kitchen, with a philosophic indiffer¬ 
 ence. I should not wonder indeed if she indulged in a little riotous 
 exultation at finding access to nooks which had been hitherto cum¬ 
 bered with assemblages of firkins and casks. I have no faith in 
 cats: they are a cold-blooded race; they are the politicians among 
 domestic animals; they care little who is master, or what are the 
 overturnings, if their pickings are secure; and what are their 
 midnight caucuses but primary meetings ? ” 
 
■ji 
 
VIEW DOWN THE LAWN. 
 
 “ F course, one of the first aims, in taking possession of 
 
 ^ J such a homestead as I have partially described, was to 
 make a clearance of debris, of unnecessary palings, of 
 luxuriant corner-crops of nettles and burdocks, of mouldering 
 masses of decayed vegetable matter, of old conchologic deposits, and 
 ferruginous wreck; all this clearance being not so much agricultural 
 employment, as hygienic. There seems to have been a mania with 
 the old New England householders, in the country, for multiplying 
 enclosures,— front yards, back yards, south and north yards,— all 
 with their palings and gates, which grow shaky with years, and give 
 cover to rank and worthless vegetation in corners, that no cultiva¬ 
 tion can reach. Of this multitude of palings I made short work : 
 good taste, economy, and all rules of good tillage, unite in favor of 
 the fewest possible enclosures, and confirm the wisdom of making 
 the palings for such as are necessary, as simple as their office of 
 defence will allow. 
 
 So it happened, under my ruling, that the little terrace-yard 
 of the front lost its identity, and was merged in the yard to the 
 north,— with the little bewildered garden to the south,—with the 
 straggling peach-orchard in the rear; and all these merged again, by 
 
26 
 
 Pictures of Edgewood. 
 
 the removal of a tottling wall, with the valley-pasture that lay south¬ 
 ward — where now clumps of evergreen, and azalias, and lilacs crown 
 the little swells, and hide the obtrusive angles of barriers beyond — 
 so that the children may race, from the door, over firm, clean, green 
 sward, for a gunshot away. This change has not been only to the 
 credit of the eye, but in every particular economic. The cost of 
 establishing and repairing the division palings has been done away 
 with; the inaccessible angles of enclosures, which fed monstrous 
 wild-growth, are submitted to even culture and cropping; an under¬ 
 drain through the bottom of the valley-lawn has absorbed the scat¬ 
 tered stones and the tottling wall of the pasture, and given a rank 
 growth of red-top and white clover, where before, through three 
 months of the year, was almost a quagmire. This drain, fed by 
 lesser branches laid on from time to time through the springy 
 ground of the peach-orchard, and by the waste-way of the fountain 
 at the door, now discharges into a little pool (once a mud-hole) at 
 the extremity of the lawn, where a willow or two timidly dip their 
 branches, and the frogs welcome every opening April with a riotous 
 uproar of voices. Even the scattered clumps of trees stand upon 
 declivities where cultivation would have been difficult, or they hide 
 out-cropping rocks which were too heavy for the walls, or the drains. 
 So it has come about that the old flimsy pasture, with its blotches 
 of mulleins, thistles, wax-myrtles, and the ill-shapen yard, straggling 
 peach-orchard (long since gone by), have made my best grass-field, 
 which needs only an occasional top-dressing of ashes or compost, 
 and a biennial scratching with a fine-toothed harrow, to yield me 
 two tons to the acre of sweet-scented hay.” 
 
View down the Lawn. 
 
 27 
 
 The thatch to the right is that of the Bee-House. 
 
 The height in the distance, and beyond the lawn enclosure, is 
 the pasture-land, which, with its treatment, is thus described: 
 
 “ This billow of hill dipped down between my home and the 
 stone cottage into a little valley, which I have transmuted, as before 
 described, into a lawn of grass-land, with its clumps of native trees 
 and flowering shrubs, and its little pool, under the willows, that 
 receives the drainage. Elsewhere, beyond, and higher, its surface 
 was scarred with stones of all shapes and sizes. Orderly geology 
 would have been at fault amid its debris: there were boulders of 
 trap, with clean sharp fissures breaking through them; there were 
 great flat fragments of gneiss covered with gray lichens; there were 
 pure granitic rocks worn round, perhaps by the play of some waves 
 that have been hushed these thousand years ; and there were excep¬ 
 tional fragments of coarse red sandstone, frittered half away by 
 centuries of rain, and leaving protruding pimples of harder pebbles. 
 In short. Professor Johnston, who advised (in Scotland) the deter¬ 
 mination of a farm-purchase by the character of the subjacent and 
 adjoining rocks, would have been at fault upon my hillside. A 
 short way back, amid the woods, he would have found a huge ridge 
 of intractable serpentine; the boulders he would have discovered to 
 be of most various quality; and if he had dipped his spade, aided 
 by a pick, he would have found a yellow, ferruginous conglomerate, 
 which the rains convert into a mud that is all aflow, and which the 
 suns bake into a surface, that with the sharpest of mattocks would 
 start a flood of perspiration, before he had combed a square yard of 
 it into a state of garden pulverization. 
 
28 
 
 Pictures of Edgewood. 
 
 “ Lying above this, however, was a vegetable mould, with a shiny 
 silicious intermixture (what precise people would call a sandy loam), 
 well knitted together by a compact mass of the roots of myrtles, of 
 huckleberry bushes, and of ferns. Geologically, the hill was a 
 ‘ drift; ’ agriculturally, considering the steep slopes and the matted 
 roots, it was uninviting; pictorially, it was rounded into the most 
 graceful of cumulated swells, and all glowing with its wild verdure; 
 practically, it was a coarse bit of neglected cow-pasture, with the 
 fences down, and the bushes rampant. 
 
 “What could be done with this? It is a query that a great 
 many landholders throughout New England will have occasion some 
 day to submit to themselves, if they have not done so already. 
 Overfeeding with starveling cows, and a lazy dash at the brush in 
 the idle days of August, will not transform such hills into fields of 
 agricultural wealth. Under such regimen they grow thinner and 
 thinner. The annual excoriation of the brush above ground seems 
 only to provoke a finer and firmer distribution of the roots below; 
 and the depasturing by cows—particularly of milch animals, folded 
 or stalled at night—will gradually and surely diminish the fertilizing 
 capital of such grazing-land. It is specially noticeable that the 
 deterioration, under these conditions, is much more marked upon 
 hill-lands than upon level meadows.* 
 
 “In the back-country, such old pastures, with their brush and 
 scattered stones, will feed sheep profitably, and will grow better 
 under the cropping. But in the immediate neighborhood of towns, 
 
 * This is perhaps more apparent than real, from the fact that upon level lands 
 the droppings are more evenly distributed. 
 
View down the Lawn. 
 
 29 
 
 where every barkeeper has his half-dozen dogs, and every Irish 
 family their cur, and every vagabond his canine associate, sheep can 
 only be kept at a serious risk of immolation for the benefit of these 
 worthies. Proper legislation might interpose a bar, indeed, to such 
 sacrifice of agricultural interests,— if legislation were not so largely 
 in the hands of dog-fanciers. 
 
 “ The sheep are not the only sufferers. 
 
 ‘‘Shall the hill be ploughed? It is not an easy task to lay a 
 good furrow along a slope of forty-five degrees^ with its seams of 
 old wintry torrents, its occasional boulders, and its matted myrtle- 
 roots ; and, if fairly accomplished, the winter’s rains may drive new 
 seams from top to bottom, carrying the light mould far down under 
 walls, and into useless places,—leaving harsh yellow scars, that will 
 defy the mellowest June sunshine. 
 
 “A city-friend, with city aptitude,, suggests — terraces; and in¬ 
 stances the pretty ones, overhung with vines, which the traveller 
 may see along the banks of the Rhine. 
 
 “ I answer kindly; and, in the same vein, suggest that such 
 scattered rocks as are not needed, may be thrown into the shape of 
 an old watch-tower—with Bishop Hatto’s for a model—to mimic 
 the Rhine ruins. 
 
 “-‘ Charming! and when the grapes are ripe, drop me a 
 
 line.’ And my city-friend plucks a bit of pennyroyal, and nips it 
 complacently. 
 
 “Terracing might be done in a rude but substantial way, at the 
 cost of about fifteen hundred dollars the acre. This might do at 
 Johannisberg; but hardly, in a large way, in Connecticut. Crops 
 
30 
 
 Pictures of Edgewood. 
 
 must needs be exceeding large upon such terraces, to compete 
 successfully with those of a thriving ‘forehanded’ man, who farms 
 upon a land-capital of less than a hundred dollars to the acre. 
 
 “ I abandoned the design of terraces. And yet, there are times 
 when I regale myself for hours together with the pleasant fancy of 
 my city-friend. Elis terraces should be well lichened over now; 
 and I seem to see brimming on the successive shelves of the hill, 
 great festoons of vines, spotted with purple clusters; amidst the 
 foliage there gleams, here and there, the broad hat of some vine¬ 
 yard-dresser (as in German pictures), and crimson kirtles come and 
 go, and songs flash into the summer stillness, and a soft purple 
 haze wraps the scene, and thickens in the hollows of the land, and 
 swims fathoms deep around the ruin- 
 
 “ ‘ Square, what d’ye ask apiece for them suckers ? ’ 
 
 “It is my neighbor, who has clambered up, holding by the 
 myrtle-bushes, to buy a pig. 
 
 “ The vexed question of the proper dressing and tillage of the 
 hillside is still in reserve. I resolved it in this wise: Of the 
 rocks most convenient, and least available for fencing purposes, I 
 constructed an easy roadway, leading by gradual inclination from 
 top to bottom; other stones were laid up in a substantial wall, 
 which supplies the place of a staggering and weakly fence, which 
 every strong northwester prostrated; still others, of a size too small 
 for any such purpose, were buried in drains, which diverted the 
 standing moisture from one or two sedgy basins on the hill, and 
 discharged the flow upon the crown of a gravelly slope. There I 
 have now the pleasure of seeing a most luxuriant growth of white 
 
E ID C3-Ei O O ID HOHESTE^ID ^ TH£MAJOK»cKNAPf> EN6.Mp‘6.»,UTH.cOMafmDWAY,ti.y. 
 
 At Present. 
 
u 
 
 
View down the Lawn. 
 
 31 
 
 clover and red-top, fertilized wholly by the flow of water which was 
 only harmful in its old locality. I next ordered, in the leisurely 
 time of later autumn, the grubbing up of the patches of myrtles and 
 briers, root and branch; these, with the mossy turf that cumbered 
 them, after thorough drying, were set on fire, and burned slumber- 
 ously, with a little careful watching and tending, for weeks together. 
 I was thus in possession of a comparatively smooth surface, not so 
 far disintegrated as to be subject to damaging washes of storm, 
 besides having a large stock of fertilizing material in the shape of 
 ashes. 
 
 “In the following Spring, these were carefully spread—a generous 
 supply of hay-seed sown, and, still further, an ample dressing of 
 phosphatic guano. The hillside was then thoroughly combed with 
 a fine-toothed Scotch harrow, and the result has been a compact 
 lively sod, and a richer bite for the cattle. 
 
 “Again, upon one or two salient points of the hill, where there 
 were stubborn rocks which forbade removal, I have set little cop¬ 
 pices of native evergreens, which, without detracting in any appre¬ 
 ciable degree from the grazing surface, will, as they grow, have 
 charming effect, and offer such modicum of shade as all exposed 
 pasture-lands need. One who looked only to simple farm-results, 
 would certainly never have planted the little coppices, or hedged 
 them, as I have done, against injury. But it appears to me that 
 judicious management of land in the neighborhood of large towns 
 should not ignore, wholly, the conservation of those picturesque 
 effects which, at no very remote time, may come to have a market¬ 
 able value greater even than the productive capacity of the soil. 
 
32 
 
 Pictures of Edgewood. 
 
 “ I have even had the hardihood to leave, upon certain particu¬ 
 larly intractable spots of the hill-land, groups of myrtles, briers, 
 scrubby oaks, wild grapes, and birches, to tangle themselves 
 together as they will, in a wanton savagery of growth. Such a 
 copse makes a round perch or two of wilderness about the sprawling 
 wreck of an old cellar and chimney, which have traditional smack 
 of former Indian occupancy; and the site gives color to the tradi¬ 
 tion ;—for you look from it southeasterly over three square miles 
 of wavy meadows, through which a river gleams; and over bays 
 that make good fishing-ground, and over a ten-mile reach of shim¬ 
 mering sea. A little never-failing spring bubbles up a few yards 
 away ; and to the westward and northward the land piles in easy 
 slope, making sunny shelter, where,— first on all the hillside,—the 
 snow vanishes in Spring.” 
 
i • 
 
 
 I I |— iPlIPP J I IJ Nllllll^^ 
 
III. 
 
 VIEW FROM LAWN OF BEE-HOUSE, AND EDGE 
 OF WOOD. 
 
 T he position of the Bee-House will explain the relation of 
 this to the previous view; there is also in sight some 
 portion of the pasture already described, with its groups 
 of evergreens. 
 
 I give my experience with the Bees. 
 
 “A shelf, on which rested five bee-hives with their buzzing 
 swarms, stood beside a clump of lilacs, not far from one of the side- 
 doors of the farm-house. These the outgoing occupant was indis¬ 
 posed to sell; it was ^unlucky,’ he said, to give up ownership of an 
 old-established colony. The idea was new to me, and I was doubly 
 anxious to buy, that I might give his whimsey a fair test. So I over¬ 
 ruled his scruples at length, moved the bees only a distance of a few 
 yards, gave them a warm shelter of thatch, and strange to say, they 
 all died within a year. 
 
 “I restocked the thatched house several times afterward; and 
 there was plenty of marjoram and sweet clover to delight them. 
 Whether it was that the misfortunes of the first colony the haunted 
 place, I know not, but they did not thrive. Sometimes, I was told, 
 it was the moth that found its way into their hives; sometimes it was 
 
 9 
 
34 
 
 Pictures of Edgewood. 
 
 an invasion of piratical ants; and every summer I observe that a few 
 gallant kingbirds take up their station near by, and pounce upon 
 the flying scouts, as they go back with their golden booty. 
 
 “ I have not the heart to shoot the kingbirds ; nor do I enter very 
 actively into the battle of the bees against the moths, or the ants; 
 least of all, do I interfere in the wars of the bees among themselves, 
 which I have found, after some observation, to be more destructive 
 and ruinous than any war with foreign foes.* I give them fair play, 
 good lodging, limitless flowers, willows bending (as Virgil advises) 
 into the quiet water of a near pool; I have even read up the stories 
 of poor blind Huber, who so loved the bees, and the poem of Gio¬ 
 vanni Rucellai, for their benefit: if they cannot hold their sceptre 
 against the tender-winged moths, who have no cruel stings, or 
 against the ants, or the wasps, or give over their satanic quarrels 
 with their kindred, let them abide the consequences. I will not say, 
 however, but that the recollection of the sharp screams of a little 
 ‘ curl-pate ’ that have once or twice pierced my ears, as she ventured 
 into too close companionship, has indisposed me to any strong ad¬ 
 vocacy of the bees. 
 
 “ My experience enables me to say that hives should not be 
 placed too near each other; the bees have a very human propensity 
 to quarrel, and their quarrels are ruinous. They blunder into each 
 
 * The Rev. Charles Butler, in his “Feminine Monarchie” (London, 1609), 
 after speaking in Chapter VII of “ Dier Enemies,” continues: “ But not any one of 
 des®, nor all des® togeder, doo half so muc harm to de Bees, as de Bees. A^is api^ 
 ut homo homini. Lupus. Dey mak de greatest spoil hot of bees and of hoonie. Dis 
 robbing is practised all de yeer.” 
 
View from Bee-house and Edge of Wood. 
 
 35 
 
 other’s homes, if near together, with a most wanton affectation of 
 forgetfulness; and they steal honey that has been carefully stored 
 away in the cells of sister swarms, with a vicious energy that they 
 rarely bestow upon a flower. In their field-forays, I believe they 
 are respectful of each other’s rights; but at home, if only the order 
 is once disturbed, and a neighbor swarm shows signs of weakness, 
 they are the most malignant pirates it is possible to conceive of. 
 
 ‘‘ Again, let no one hope for success in their treatment, unless 
 he is disposed to cultivate familiarity : a successful bee-keeper loves 
 his bees, and has a way of fondling them, and pushing his intimacy 
 about the swarming-time, which I would not counsel an inapt or a 
 nervous person to imitate. 
 
 “ Gelieu, a Swiss authority, and a rival of Huber in his enthu¬ 
 siasm, says: ‘Beaucoup de gens aiment les abeilles; je n’ai vu 
 personne qui les aima m'ediocrement; on se passionne pour elles.’ 
 
 “ I have a neighbor, a quiet old gentleman, who is possessed of 
 this passion; his swarms multiply indefinitely; I see him holding 
 frequent conversations with them through the backs of their hives. 
 All the stores of my little colony would be absorbed in a day, if they 
 were brought into contact with his lusty swarms. 
 
 “ Many of the old writers tell pleasant stories of the amiable 
 submission of their favorites to gentle handling; but I have never 
 had the curiosity to put this submission to the test. I remember 
 that Van Amburgh tells tender stories of the tigers. 
 
 “ I have observed, however, that little people listen with an amus¬ 
 ed interest to those tales of the bees, and I have sometimes availed 
 myself of a curious bit of old narrative, to stanch the pain of a sting. 
 
4 
 
 36 Pictures of Edgewood. 
 
 “ ‘ Who will listen,’ I say, ‘ to a story of M. Lombard’s about 
 a little girl on whose hand a whole swarm of bees once alighted ? ’ 
 
 “ And all say, ' I,’ save the sobbing one, who looks consent. 
 
 “ M. Lombard was a French lawyer, who was for a long time 
 imprisoned in the dungeons of Robespierre; and when that tyrant 
 reformer was beheaded, this prisoner gained his liberty, and went 
 into the country, where he became a farmer, and wrote three or four 
 books about the bees : among other things he says : 
 
 “ ‘ A young girl of my acquaintance was greatly afraid of bees, 
 but was completely cured of her fear by the following incident. A 
 swarm having left a hive, I observed the queen alight by herself 
 at a little distance from the apiary. I immediately called my 
 little friend, that I might show her this important personage; she 
 was anxious to have a nearer view of her majesty, and therefore, 
 having first caused her to draw on her gloves, I gave the queen into 
 her hand. Scarcely had I done so, when we were surrounded by the 
 whole bees of the swarm. In this emergency I encouraged the 
 trembling girl to be steady, and to fear nothing, remaining myself 
 close by her, and covering her head and shoulders with a thin hand¬ 
 kerchief I then made her stretch out the hand that held the queen, 
 and the bees instantly alighted on it, and hung from her fingers as 
 from the branch of a tree. The little girl, experiencing no injury, 
 was delighted above measure at the novel sight, and so entirely freed 
 from all fear, that she bade me uncover her face. The spectators 
 were charmed at the interesting spectacle. I at length brought a 
 hive, and shaking the swarm from the child’s hand, it was lodged in 
 safety without inflicting a single sting.’ 
 
View from Bee-house and Edge of Wood. 
 
 37 
 
 “ As I begin the story, there is a tear in the eye of the sobbing 
 one, but as I read on, the tear is gone, and the eye dilates; and 
 when I have done, the sting is forgotten. 
 
 “ I have written thus at length, at the suggestion of my thatch 
 of a bee-house, because I shall have nothing to say of my bees 
 again, as copartners with me in the flowers, and in the farm. I 
 have to charge to their account a snug sum for purchase-money, and 
 for their straw housing— a good many hours of bad humor, and the 
 recollection of those little screams to which I have already alluded. 
 Thus far, I can only credit them with one or two moderately sized 
 jars of honey, and a pleasant concerted buzzing with which they 
 welcome the first warm weather of the Spring. Even as I write, 
 I observe that a few of my winged workers are alight upon the 
 mossy stones that lie half covered in the basin of the fountain, 
 
 and are sedulously exploring the water.’* 
 
 10 
 

 
 
 
 
IV. 
 
 VIEW TOWARD VILLAGE FROM FRONT. 
 
 “ A THATCHED stile is opposite, flanked by a straggling 
 r-\ hedge of Osage orange; and from the stile the ground 
 falls away in green and gradual slope to a great plateau of 
 fenced fields, checkered, a month since, with bluish lines of swedes, 
 with the ragged purple of mangels^ and the feathery emerald- 
 green of carrots. There are umber-colored patches of fresh-turned 
 furrows; here and there the mossy, luxurious verdure of new- 
 springing rye; gray stubble; the ragged brown of frost-bitten 
 rag-weed; next, a line of tree-tops, thickening as they drop to the 
 near bed of a river, and beyond the river-basin showing again, 
 with tufts of hemlock among naked oaks and maples; then roofs, 
 cupolasj ambitious look-outs of suburban houses, spires, belfries, 
 turrets : all these commingling in a long line of white, brown, 
 and gray, which in sunny weather is backed by purple hills, and 
 flanked one way by a shining streak of water, and the other by a 
 stretch of low, wooded mountains that turn from purple to blue, 
 and so blend with the northern sky. 
 
 “To the north, under such oblique glance as can be caught 
 [from the library-window], the farm-lands stretch half a mile to the 
 skirts of a quiet village. A few tall chimneys smoke there lazily. 
 
40 
 
 Pictures of Edgewood. 
 
 and below them you see as many quick and repeated puffs of white 
 steam. Two white spires and a brown tower are in bold relief 
 against the precipitous basaltic cliff, at whose foot the village seems 
 to nestle. Yet the mountain is not wholly precipitous; for the 
 columnar masses have been fretted away by a thousand frosts, mak¬ 
 ing a sloping debris below, and leaving above, the iron-yellow scars 
 of fresh cleavage, the older blotches of gray, and the still older 
 stain of lichens. Nor is the summit bald, but tufted with dwarf 
 cedars and oaks, which, as they file away upon either flank, mingle 
 with a heavier growth of hickories and chestnuts. A few stunted 
 kalmias and hemlock-spruces have found foothold in the clefts upon 
 the face of the rock, furnishing a tawny green that blends prettily 
 with the scars, lichens, and weather-stains of the cliff: all which 
 show under a sunset-light richly and changefully as the breast of a 
 dove.” 
 
jroadwayN.Y. 
 
V. 
 
 VIEW OF FARM-HOUSE. 
 
 I ^HE wooden farm-house, which lay so quietly under the 
 I trees at the foot of the hill when I first saw the place, 
 is long since burned and gone. It was the old story of 
 ashes in a wooden kit—very lively ashes—that one night kindled 
 the kit, and thence spread to the shed, and in a moment half the 
 house was in flame. It was a picturesque sight from my window 
 on the hill; but not a pleasant one. A wild, sweeping, gallant 
 blaze, that wrapped old powder-post timbers in its roar, and licked 
 through crashing sashes, and came crinkling through the roof in a 
 hundred wilful jets, and then lashed and overlaid the whole with 
 a tent of vermilion, above which there streamed into the night 
 great yellow swaying pennants of flame. But the burnt house 
 is long since replaced by another. It would have been a simple 
 and easy task to restore it as before : a few loads of lumber, the 
 scheme of some country joiner, and the thing were done. But 
 I was anxious to determine by actual trial how far the materials 
 which nature had provided on the farm itself, could be made avail¬ 
 able. 
 
 “ The needed timber could of course be readily obtained from 
 
 the farm-wood; and from the same source might also be derived 
 11 
 
42 
 
 Pictures of Edgewood. 
 
 the saw-logs for exterior covering. But from the fact that pine is 
 very much more suitable and durable for cover than the ordinary 
 timber of New England woods, the economy of such a procedure 
 would be very doubtful; nor would it demonstrate so palpably and 
 unmistakably, as I was desirous of doing, that the building was of 
 home-growth. I had seen very charming little farm-houses on the 
 Downs of Hampshire, made almost entirely from the flints of 
 the neighboring chalkbeds; and in Cumberland and Westmoreland 
 very substantial and serviceable cottages are built out of the rudest 
 stones, the farm-laborers assisting in the work. Now there were, 
 scattered along the roadside, as along most country roadsides of 
 New England, a great quantity of small, ill-shapen stones, drawn 
 thither in past years from the fields, and serving only as the breed- 
 ing-ground for pestilent briers. These stones I determined to 
 convert into a cottage. 
 
 Of course, if such an experiment should involve a cost largely 
 exceeding that of a simple wooden house of ordinary construction, 
 its value would be partly negatived; since I was particularly anxious 
 to demonstrate not only the possibility of employing the humblest 
 materials at hand, but also of securing durability and picturesque¬ 
 ness in conjunction with a rigid economy. 
 
 “ I need not say to any one who has attempted a similar task, 
 that the builders discouraged me: the stones were too round or 
 too small; they had no face; but I insisted upon my plan— 
 only yielding the use of brick for the corners and for the window- 
 jambs. 
 
 “ I further insisted that no stone should be touched with a 
 
View of Farm-house. 
 
 43 
 
 hammer; and that, so far as feasible, the mossy or weather sides 
 of the stones should be exposed. The cementing material was 
 simple mortar, made of shell-lime and sharp sand; the only ex¬ 
 ception being one course, of five or six inches in depth, laid in 
 water-cement, six inches above the ground, and intended to prevent 
 the ascent of moisture through the mason-work. The house-walls 
 were of the uniform height of ten feet, covered with a roof of 
 sharp pitch. The gables were carried up with plank laid on verti¬ 
 cally, and thoroughly battened; and, to give picturesque effect as 
 well as added space upon the garret-floor, the gables overhang 
 the walls by the space of a foot, and are supported by the project¬ 
 ing floor-beams, which are rounded at their ends, but otherwise left 
 rough. This feature, as well as the sharp pent roof, was an English 
 one, and a pleasant reminder of old houses I had seen in the neigh¬ 
 borhood of Gloucester. 
 
 “To avoid the expense of a great number of window-jambs, 
 which, being of brick, were not of home origin, I conceived the 
 idea of throwing two or three windows into one; thus giving, for 
 purely economic reasons, a certain Swiss aspect to the building, and 
 a pleasant souvenir of a sunny Sunday in Meyringen. These 
 broad windows, it must be observed, have no cumbrous lintels of 
 stone, for none such were to be found upon the farm; but 
 the superincumbent wall is supported by stanch timbers of oak, 
 and these disguised or concealed by little protecting rooflets of 
 plank. Thus far, simple economy governed every part of the 
 design ; but to give increased architectural effect, as well as com¬ 
 fort, a porch, with peak corresponding in shape to the gable, was 
 
44 
 
 Pictures of Edgewood. 
 
 thrown out over the principal door to the south; and this porch 
 was constructed entirely, saving its roof, of cedar unstripped of 
 its bark. If it has not been removed, there is a parsonage-house 
 at Ambleside, in the lake-country of Westmoreland, which shows 
 very much such another, even to the diamond loophole in its peak. 
 
 “ Again, the chimneys, of which there are two, instead of being 
 completed in staring red, were carried up in alternate checkers of 
 cobbles and brick, the whole surmounted by a projecting coping of 
 mossy stones. In view of the fact that this architectural device 
 demanded dexterous handling, I cannot allege its economy; but 
 its extra cost was so trifling, and its pleasant juxtaposition of tints 
 was so suggestive of the particolored devices that I had seen on 
 the country houses of Lombardy, that the chimneys have become 
 cheap little monuments of loiterings in Italy. 
 
 “ The plank of the gables, wholly unplaned, has been painted 
 a neutral tint to harmonize with the stone, and the battens are 
 white, to accord with the lines of mortar in the wall below; the 
 commingled brick and stone of the house are repeated in the 
 chimneys above; the roof has now taken on a gray tint; the lich¬ 
 ens are fast forming on the lower stones ; a few vines, — the 
 Virginia creeper chiefest (Ampelopsis Hederacea), — are fastening 
 into the crevices, making wreaths about the windows all the summer 
 through, and in autumn hang flaming on the wall. There is a May 
 crimson too, from the rosebushes that are trailed upon the porch. 
 It is all heavily shaded; a long, low wall of gray, lighted with red- 
 bordered embrasures, taking mellowness from every added year. 
 There are no blinds to repair; there is but little paint to renew; it 
 
- . 
 
 ■ r.': 
 
 
 b 
 
 I 
 
 I 
 
 i 
 
 I 
 
 
View of Farm-house. 
 
 45 
 
 is warm in winter; it is cool in summer; vines cling to it kindly; 
 the lichens love it; I would not replace its homeliness with the 
 jauntiest green-blinded house in the country. 
 
 “ Of course, so anomalous a structure called out the witticisms of 
 my country neighbors. ‘ Was it a blacksmith’s shop ? * ‘ Was it a 
 
 saw-mill ? ’ and with a loud appreciatory ‘ guffaw ’ the critics pass by. 
 
 “ Our country tastes are as yet very ambitious ; homeliness and 
 simplicity are not appetizing enough. But in time we shall ripen 
 into a wholesome severity in this matter. I am gratified to per¬ 
 ceive that the harshest observers of my poor cottage in the begin¬ 
 ning, have now come to regard it with a kindly interest. It mates 
 so fairly with the landscape, — it mates so fairly with its purpose; 
 it is so resolutely unpretending, and carries such an air of perma¬ 
 nence and durability, that it wins and has won upon the most arrant 
 doubters. 
 
 “ The country neighbors were inclined to look upon the affair 
 as a piece of stupidity, not comparable with a fine white house, set 
 off by cupola and green blinds. But it was presently observed that 
 cultivated people, from the town, in driving past, halted for a better 
 view; the halts became frequent; it was intimated that So-and-so, 
 of high repute, absolutely admired the homeliness. Whereupon 
 the country critics undertook an inquiry into the causes of their 
 distaste, and queried if their judgment might not have need of 
 revision. Did their opinion spring from a discerning measurement 
 of the real fitness of a country-house, or out of a cherished and 
 traditional regard for white and green ? 
 
 “ The final question, however, in regard to it, as a matter of 
 12 
 
46 
 
 Pictures of Edgewood. 
 
 practical interest, is one of economy. Can a house of the homely 
 material and character described be built cheaply? Unquestion¬ 
 ably. In my own case the cost of a cottage fifty feet by twenty-six, 
 and with ten-feet walls — containing five serviceable rooms, besides 
 closets, on its main floor, and two large chambers of good height 
 under the roof, as well as dairy-room in the east end of the cellar 
 — was between eleven and twelve hundred dollars.* The esti¬ 
 mates given me for a wooden house, of the stereotyped aspect and 
 similar dimensions, were within a few dollars of the same sum. 
 
 “It must be remembered, however, that any novelty of con¬ 
 struction in a particular district, costs by reason of its novelty; the 
 mason, too, charges for the possible difficulties of overcoming his 
 inexperience in the material. The carpenter rates the rough join¬ 
 ing at the same figure with the old mouldings and finishing-boards 
 to which he is accustomed, and of which he may have a stock on 
 hand. Yet, notwithstanding these drawbacks, the work was accom¬ 
 plished within the limits of cost which the most economic would 
 have reckoned essential to a building of equal capacity. 
 
 “ It is further to be considered, that while I paid skilful masons 
 for this rough work the same price which they exacted for the nice 
 work of cities, it would have been quite possible for an intelligent 
 proprietor to commit very much of it to an ordinary farm-laborer, 
 and so reduce the cost by at least one third. 
 
 “ I have dwelt at length upon this little architectural experi- 
 
 * It must be remembered that these figures date from that old epoch when 
 five-penny pieces were made of silver, and honest Paddies worked for “ a dollar 
 and found.” Nowadays the figures could be safely multiplied by two. 
 
View of Farm-house. 
 
 47 
 
 ence, because I believe that such meagre details of construction as 
 I have given may be of service to those having occasion to erect 
 similar tenant-houses; and again, because in view of the fact that 
 we must in time have a race of farm-laborers among us who shall 
 also be householders, I count it a duty to make such use of the 
 homely materials at hand as shall insure durability and comfort, 
 while the simplicity of detail will allow the owner to avail himself 
 of his own labor and ingenuity in the construction. 
 
 “ Such a farm-house as I have described should have, in all 
 northern latitudes, a sheltered position and a sunny exposure. Of 
 course, a situation convenient to the fields under tillage and to 
 other farm-buildings is to be sought; but beyond this, no law of 
 propriety, of good taste, or of comfort, is more imperative than 
 shelter from bleak winds, and a frontage to the south. No neigh¬ 
 bor can bring such cheer to a man’s doorstep as the sun. 
 
 “ There are absurd ideas afloat in regard to the front and back 
 side of a house, which infect village morals and manners in a 
 most base and unmeaning way. In half the country-towns, and 
 by half the farmers, it is considered necessary to retain a pretend¬ 
 ing front side upon some dusty street or highway, with tightly- 
 closed blinds and bolted door; with parlors only ventured upon in 
 an uneasy way from month to month, to consult some gilt-bound 
 dictionary or museum, that lies there in state like a^ king’s coffin. 
 The occupant, meantime, will be living in some back corner, — 
 slipping in and out at back doors, never at ease save in his most 
 uninviting room, and as much a stranger to the blinded parlor, 
 which very likely engrosses the best half of his house, as his visitor. 
 
48 
 
 Pictures of Edgewood. 
 
 the country parson. All this is as arrant a sham and affectation, 
 as the worst ones of the cities. 
 
 “It is true that every man will wish to set aside a certain por¬ 
 tion of his house for the offices of hospitality. But the easy and 
 familiar hospitalities of a country village, or of the farmer, do not 
 call for any exceptional stateliness; the farmer invites his best 
 friends to his habitual living-room ; let him see to it, then, that his 
 living-room be the sunniest and most cheerful of his house. So, 
 his friends will come to love it, and he and his children — to love 
 it and to cherish it, so that it shall be the rallying-point of the 
 household affections through all time. No sea so distant, but the 
 memory of a cheery, sunlit home-room, with its pictures on the 
 wall and its flame upon the hearth, shall haunt the voyager’s 
 thought; and the flame upon the hearth and the sunlit window 
 will pave a white path over the intervening waters, where tenderest 
 fancies, like angels, shall come and go. No soldier, wounded on 
 these battle-fields of ours, and feeling the mists of death gathering 
 round him, but will call back with a gushing fondness such glimpse 
 of a cheery and cherished hearthstone, and feel hope and heart 
 lighted by the vision — bringing to his last hold on earth his most 
 hallowed memories ; and so, binding, by the tenderest of links, the 
 heartiest of the old life to the bloody dawn of the new. 
 
 “ There is a deeper philosophy in this than may at first sight 
 appear. Who shall tell us how many a break-down of a wayward 
 son is traceable to the cheerless aspect of his own home and fireside ? 
 
 “ But just now I am no moralist — only house-builder. In the 
 farm-cottage whose principal features I have detailed, I have given 
 
View of Farm-house. 
 
 49 
 
 fifty feet of frontage to the south, and only the gable-end with its 
 windows to the street. As I enter the white wicket by the corner, 
 under the elm-tree which bowers it, the distribution counts thus : 
 a miniature parlor with its lookout to the street, and a broad win¬ 
 dow to the south; next is the rustic porch, and a door opening 
 upon the hall; next, a broad living-room or kitchen, with its gen¬ 
 erous chimney, and this flanked by a wash-room, or scullery, from 
 which a second outer door opens upon the southern front. To 
 this latter door, which may have its show of tubs, tins, and drying- 
 mops, a screen of shrubbery gives all needed privacy from the 
 street, and separates by a wall of flowering things from the modest 
 pretensions of the entrance by the porch. At least, such was an 
 available part of the design. If the good woman’s poultry, loving 
 so sunny a spot, will worry away the rootlets of the lower flowering 
 shrubs, and leave only a tree or two for screen, it is an arrangement 
 of the leafy furniture over which the successive occupants have 
 entire control. The noticeable fact is, that the best face of the 
 cottage, and its most serviceable openings, whether of window or 
 door, are given to the full flow of the sun, and not to the roadside. 
 What is the road, indeed, but a convenience ? Why build at it, or 
 toward it, as if it were sovereign, or as if we owed it a duty or a 
 reverence? We owe it none; indeed, under the ordering of most 
 highway surveyors, we owe it only contempt. But the path of the 
 sun and of the seasons is of God’s ordering; and a south window 
 will print on every winter’s morning a golden prayer upon the floor; 
 and every summer’s morning the birds and bees will repeat it 
 among the flowers at the southern door.” 
 
 13 
 
VI. 
 
 DOWN THE GARDEN. 
 
 ENTER upon my garden by a little, cvdizy, rustic wicket, 
 I over which a Virginia creeper has tossed itself into a careless 
 tangle of festoons. The entrance is overshadowed by a 
 cherry-tree, which must be nearly half a century old, and which, as 
 it filches easily very much of the fertilizing material that is bestowed 
 upon the garden, makes a weightier show of fruit than can be 
 boasted by any of the orchard company. 
 
 “ A broad walk leads down the middle of the garden, — bor¬ 
 dered on either side by a range of stout box, and interrupted mid¬ 
 way of its length by a box-edged circle, that is filled and crowned 
 with one cone-shaped Norway-Spruce. These lines, and this circlet 
 of idle green, are its only ornamentation. Easterly of the walk is a 
 sudden terrace-slope, stocked with currants, raspberries, and all the 
 lesser fruits, in a maze of lines and curves. Westward is a level 
 open space, devoted to long parallel lines of garden vegetables. The 
 slope, by reason of its surface and its crops, is subject only to fork- 
 culture ; the western half, on the other hand, has the economy of 
 deep and thorough trench-ploughing, every autumn and spring. 
 
 “ Nor is this an economy to be overlooked by a farmer. Very 
 many, without pretensions to that nicety of culture which is sup- 
 
Pictures of Edgewood. 
 
 52 
 
 posed to belong to spade husbandry alone, so overstock their gardens 
 with confused and intercepting lines of fruit-shrubbery, and peren¬ 
 nial herbs, as to forbid any thorough action of the plough. By the 
 simple device, however, of giving to the garden the shape of a long 
 parallelogram, and arranging its trees, shrubbery, and walks, in lines 
 parallel with its length, and by establishing easy modes of ingress 
 and egress at either end, the plough will prove a great economizer ; 
 and under careful handling, will leave as even a surface and as fine 
 a tilth as follows the spade. I make this suggestion in the interest 
 of those farmers who are compelled to measure narrowly the cost 
 of tillage, and who cannot indulge in the amateur weakness of 
 wasted labor. 
 
 “ I have provided also a leafy protection for this garden against 
 the sweep of winds from the northwest: northward, this protection 
 consists of a wild belt of tangled growth — sumacs, hickories, cedars, 
 wild-cherries, oaks — separated from the northern walk of the 
 garden by a trim hedgerow of hemlock-spruce. This tangled belt 
 is of a spontaneous growth, and has shot up upon a strip of the 
 neglected pasture-land, from which, seven years since, I trenched 
 the area of the garden. Thus it is not only a protection, but ofiFers 
 a pleasant contrast of what the whole field might have been, with 
 what the garden now is. I must confess that I love these savage 
 way marks of progressive tillage — as I love to meet here and there 
 some stolid old-time thinker, whom the rush of modern ideas has 
 left in picturesque isolation. 
 
 “Time and again some enterprising gardener has begged the 
 privilege of uprooting this strip of wildness, and trenching to the 
 

Down the Garden. 
 
 53 
 
 skirt of the wall beyond it; but I have guarded the waste as if it 
 were a crop ; the cheewits and thrushes make their nests undisturbed 
 there. The long, firm gravel-alley which traverses the garden from 
 north to south, traverses also this bit of savage shrubbery, and by 
 a latticed gate, opens upon smooth grass-lands beyond, which are 
 skirted with forest. 
 
 “Within this tangle-wood, I have set a few graftlings upon a wild 
 crab, and planted a peach or two—only to watch the struggle which 
 these artificial people will make with their wild neighbors. And so 
 various is the growth within this limited belt, that my children pick 
 there, in their seasons, luscious dew-berries, huckleberries, wild 
 raspberries, billberries, and choke-cherries ; and in autumn, gather 
 bouquets of golden-rod and asters, set off with crimson tufts of 
 sumac, and the scarlet of maple-boughs. And when I see the 
 brilliancy of these, and smack the delicate flavor of the wild-fruit, 
 it makes me doubt if our progress is, after all, as grand as it should 
 be, or as we vainly believe it to be ; and (to renew my parallel)—it 
 seems to me that the old-time and gone-by thinkers may possibly 
 have given us as piquant and marrowy suggestions upon whatever 
 subject of human knowledge they touched, as the hot-house philos¬ 
 ophers of to-day. I never open, of a Sunday afternoon, upon the 
 yellowed pages of Jeremy Taylor, but his flavor and affluence, and 
 homely wealth of allusions, suggest the tangled wild of the garden 
 — with its starry flowers,, its piquant berries, its scorn of human 
 rulings, its unkempt vigor, its boughs and tendrils stretching heaven¬ 
 ward; and I never water a reluctant hill of yellowed cucumbers, 
 and coax it with all manner of concentrated fertilizers into bearing, 
 
 14 
 
54 
 
 Pictures of Edgewood. 
 
 —but I think of the elegant education of the dapper Dr.-, and 
 
 of the sappy, and flavorless results. 
 
 “To the westward of the garden, and concealing a decrepit mossy 
 wall, that is covered with blackberry vines and creepers, is the 
 flanking shelter of another hemlock hedge of wanton luxuriance. A 
 city-garden could never yield the breadth it demands ; but upon 
 the farm, the complete and graceful protection it gives, is well pur¬ 
 chased, at the cost of a few feet of land. Nor is much time 
 required for its growth; five years since, and this hedge of four feet 
 in height, by two hundred yards in length, was all brought away 
 from the wood in a couple of market-baskets. 
 
 “The importance of garden shelter is by no means enough con¬ 
 sidered. I do not indeed name my own method as the best to be 
 pursued; flanking buildings or high enclosures may give it more 
 conveniently in many situations; a steep, sudden hillside may give 
 it best of all ; but it should never be forgotten that while we 
 humor the garden-soil with what the plants and trees best love, 
 we should also give their foliage the protection against storms 
 which they covet, and which, in an almost equal degree, con¬ 
 tributes to their luxuriance. 
 
 “To the dwarf-fruit, as well as to the grape, this shelter is 
 absolutely essential; if they are compelled to fortify against aggres¬ 
 sive blasts,— they may do it indeed; but they will, in this way, 
 dissipate a large share of the vitality which would else go to the 
 fruit. Young cattle may bear the exposure of winter, but they will 
 be pinched under it, and take on a weazen look of age, and expend 
 a great stock of vital energy in the contest. 
 
Down the Garden. 
 
 55 
 
 “Here let me outline, in brief, what a farmer’s garden may be 
 made, without other than home-labor. A broad walk shall run 
 down the middle of either a square enclosure, or long parallelogram. 
 A box-edging upon either side is of little cost, and contributes em¬ 
 inently to neatness ; it will hold good for eight years, without too 
 great encroachment, and at that time will sell to the nurserymen for 
 more than enough to pay the cost of resetting. On either side of 
 this walk, in a border of six feet wide, the farmer may plant his 
 dwarf-fruit, with grapes at intervals to climb upon a home-made 
 cedar trellis, that shall overarch and embower the walk. If he love 
 an evening pipe in his garden, he may plant some simple seat under 
 one or more of these leafy arbors. 
 
 “At least one half the garden, as I before suggested, he may 
 easily arrange, to till,— spring and autumn,— with the plough; and 
 whatever he places there in the way of tree and shrub, must be in 
 lines parallel with the walk. On the other half, he will be subjected 
 to no such limitations ; there, he will establish his perennials — his 
 asparagus, his thyme, his sage, and parsley ; his rhubarb, his goose¬ 
 berries, strawberries, and raspberries ; and in an angle — hidden if he 
 choose by a belt of shrubbery — he may have his hotbed and com¬ 
 post heap. Fork-culture, which all these crops demand, will admit 
 of any arrangement he may prefer, and he may enliven the group¬ 
 ings, and win the goodwife’s favor, by here and there a little circlet 
 of such old-fashioned flowers as tulips, yellow lilies and white, with 
 roses of all shades. 
 
 “ Upon the other half he may make distribution of parts, by 
 banding the various crops with border-lines of China or Refugee 
 
56 
 
 Pictures of Edgewood. 
 
 beans; and he may split the whole crosswise, by a walk overarched 
 with climbing Limas, or the London horticultural — setting olF the 
 two ends with an abutment of scarlet-runners, and a surbase of 
 fiery nasturtium. 
 
 “ There are also available and pretty devices for making the land 
 do double duty. The border-lines of China beans, which will be 
 ripened in early August, may have Swedes sown in their shadow in 
 the first days of July, so that when the Chinas have fulfilled their 
 mission, there shall be a new line of purple-green in their place. The 
 early radishes and salads may have their little circlets of cucumber- 
 pits, no way interfering with the first, and covering the ground when 
 the first are done. The early Bassano beets will come away in time 
 to leave space for the full flow of the melons that have been planted 
 at intervals among them. The cauliflower will find grateful shade 
 under the lines of sweet corn, and the newly-set winter cabbages, a 
 temporary refuge from the sun, under shelter of the ripened peas. 
 I do not make these suggestions at random, but as the results of 
 actual and successful experience. 
 
 “ With such simple and orderly arrangement, involving no exces¬ 
 sive labor, I think every farmer and country-liver may take pleasure 
 in his garden as an object of beauty; — making of it a little farm in 
 miniature, with its coppices of dwarf-trees, its hedgerows of cur¬ 
 rants and gooseberries, and its meadows of strawberries and thyme. 
 From the very day on which, in Spring, he sees the first faint, up¬ 
 heaving, tufted lines of green from his Dan-O’Rourkes, to the day 
 when the dangling Limas, and sprawling, bloody tomatoes are smit¬ 
 ten by the frost, it offers a field of constant progress, and of succes- 
 
Down the Garden. 57 
 
 sive triumphs. Line by line, and company by company, the army 
 of green things takes position; the little flowery banners are flung to 
 the wind; and lo ! presently every soldier of them all — plundering 
 only the earth and the sunshine—is loaded with booty. 
 
 15 
 
 ¥ 
 
VII. 
 
 VIEW FROM HILL OVER FARM-FLAT. 
 
 T his view is from the Edgewood Road (indicated in the 
 ground-plan) upon the hills in the rear of the house. 
 The farm-flat lies below, and in the distance New Haven 
 and East Rock. Mr. Rockwood’s camera has done its work 
 well; but distant views are always disappointing in photography. 
 I am sorry to have to record the demise of the old cow “ Spot,” 
 whose portrait appears in the foreground, and who was an honor to 
 her kind and sex. 
 
 In reference to the flat below, I continue to quote from the 
 “ Farm of Edgewood.” 
 
 “ It is a diflferent matter with the eighty acres of meadow which 
 lie stretched out in view from my door. There, at least, it seemed 
 tp me, must be a clean, clear sweep for the furrows. Yet I remem¬ 
 ber there were long wavy lines of elder-bushes, and wild-cherries, 
 groping beside the disorderly dividing fences. There were weakly 
 old apple-trees, with blackened, dead tops, and with trunks half 
 concealed by thickets of dwarfish shoots; there were triplets of lithe 
 elms, and hickory-trees, scattered here and there; — in some fields. 
 
6 o 
 
 Pictures of Edgewood. 
 
 stunted, draggled cedar-bushes, and masses of yellow-weed; — a 
 little patch of ploughed land in the corner of one enclosure, and a 
 waving half-acre of rye in the middle of the next. The fences 
 themselves were disjointed and twisted,— the fields without uni¬ 
 formity in size, and with no order in their arrangement. 
 
 “ In looking over the scene now, I find no straggling cedars, no 
 scattered shoots of elms; the wayward elders and the wild-cherries 
 — save one protecting and orderly hedgerow along the northern 
 border of the farm — are gone. The decrepit apple-trees are rooted 
 up, or combed and pruned into more promising shape. Ten-acre 
 fields are distributed over the meadow-land, and each, for the most 
 part, has its single engrossing crop. 
 
 “As I look out from my library-window to-day—and the 
 learned reader may guess the month from my description — I see 
 one field reddened with the lusty bloom of clover, which stands 
 trembling in its ranks, and which I greatly fear will be doubled on 
 its knees with the first rain-storm; another shows the yellowish 
 waving green of full-grown rye, swaying and dimpling, and drifting 
 as the idle winds will; another is half in barley and half in oats — 
 a bristling green beard upon the first, the oats just flinging out 
 their fleecy, feathery tufts of blossom; upon another field are deep 
 dark lines, beneath which, in September, there are fair hopes of 
 harvesting a thousand bushels of potatoes; yet another shows fine 
 lines of growing corn, and a brown area, where a closer look would 
 reveal the delicate growth of fresh-starting carrots and mangel. All 
 the rest in waving grass ; not so clean as could be wished, for I see 
 
View from Hill over Farm-flat. 6i 
 
 tawny stains of blossoming sorrel, and fields whitened, like a sheet, 
 with daisies. 
 
 “ If there be any cure for daisies, short of a clean fallow every 
 second year, I do not know it; at least, not in a region where your 
 good neighbors allow them to mature seed every year, and stock 
 your fields with every strong wind, afresh. 
 
 “ Heavy top-dressing is recommended for their eradication, 
 but it is not effective; so far as I can see, the interlopers, if once 
 established, enjoy heavy feeding. A rye-crop is by many counted 
 an exterminator of this pest; but it will find firm footing after rye. 
 Thorough and clean tillage, with a system of rotation, afford the 
 only security. 
 
 “It is not Burns’ ‘wee-tipped’ daisy that is to be dealt with; 
 it is a sturdier plant—our ox-eye daisy of the fields: there is no 
 modesty in its flaunting air, and the bold up-lift of its white and 
 yellow face. 
 
 “ I never thought there was a beauty in it, until, on a day — 
 years ago — after a twelvemonth’s wandering over the fields of the 
 Continent, I came upon a little pot of it, under the wing of the 
 Madeleine, on the streets of Paris. It was a dwarfish specimen, 
 and the nodding blossoms (only a pair of them) gave a modest 
 dip over the edge of the red crock, as if they felt themselves in a 
 country of strangers. But it was the true daisy for all this, and I 
 greeted it with a welcoming franc of purchase-money, and carried it 
 to my rooms, and established it upon my balcony, where, while the 
 flower lasted, I made a new Picciola of it. And as I watered it, 
 16 
 
 V 
 
62 
 
 Pictures of Edgewood. 
 
 and watched its green buttons of buds unfolding the white leaflets, 
 wide visions of rough New England grass-lands came pouring with 
 the sunshine into the Parisian window, and with them,— the drowsy 
 song of locusts,—the gushing melody of Bob-o*-Lincolns,—until 
 the drum-beat at the opposite Caserne drowned it, and broke the 
 dream.” 
 
■mm- 
 
 ; 1 
 
 
♦ 
 
 I; 
 
 r 
 
 
 I 
 
 from Soiitli Door. 
 
VIII. 
 
 LOOKING TOWARD HARBOR. 
 
 T he morning haze utterly forbids, in this print, a sight of 
 the Light-house and the water, which are the great charms 
 of the view. Yet nothing can be more delicate than the 
 wonderful presentment of bark, twigs, and green foliage, in this 
 admirable photograph. The effect of the morning-light, too, (it 
 was taken at six a. m.,) is unmistakable, and is rarely fine. In 
 looking at it I seem to see the dew upon the clover, and^—in the 
 distance—the glimmer of the sun upon the water. The view con¬ 
 fronts us every day from the dining-room windows, and from the 
 little southern porch where stands our bench for gossip upon the 
 hazy evenings of autumn: no fever and ague drives us in-doors: 
 until the light of the day is wholly gone, the little ones thwack at 
 their croquet-balls under the great maple which is in the foreground 
 of the picture. 
 
 The shrubbery is simply a screen from intrusive eyes upon the 
 quiet highway which passes just beyond. In the old well (with 
 rustic roofing) there lives a family of red squirrels, who disport 
 themselves among the trees very much at their will, and venture 
 even to the porch for crumbs. I shall never cease to lo’-'e the 
 squirrels, or the scene. 
 

 5 
 

 
 r 
 
IX. 
 
 ENTRANCE TO EDGEWOOD ROAD. 
 
 E DGEWOOD road, of which the entrance gateway is 
 here presented, is a new drive — open to the public two 
 days in each week — which has been within a year past 
 completed over the hills in rear of the homestead. The entire 
 sweep of this drive, which commands lovely views over the Harbor, 
 Sound, and City, may be traced upon the large lithographic print. 
 
 I think I recognize the dresses of those small people grouped 
 at the corner of the gateway, and am quite sure the stumpy little 
 fellow by the fence is familiar to me. • 
 
 The frowning bastions of West Rock bound the view to the 
 north, and under its skirts stands the quiet village. 
 
 17 
 
it