hould go about his twenty-acre
field, poking his finger into it here and there, and dropping down a
mustard seed, would be thought a penurious, narrow-minded husbandman.
The dandelions in the river-meadows, and the forget-me-nots along the
mountain roads, you see at once they are put to no economy in space.
Some seasons, too, our rye comes up here and there a spear, sole and
single like a church-spire. It doesn't care to crowd itself where it
knows there is such a deal of room. The world is wide, the world is all
before us, says the rye. Weeds, too, it is amazing how they spread.
No such thing as arresting them--some of our pastures being a sort
of Alsatia for the weeds. As for the grass, every spring it is like
Kossuth's rising of what he calls the peoples. Mountains, too, a regular
camp-meeting of them. For the same reason, the same all-sufficiency of
room, our shadows march and countermarch, going through their various
drills and masterly evolutions, like the old imperial guard on the
Champs de Mars. As for the hills, especially where the roads cross them
the supervisors of our various towns have given notice to all concerned,
that they can come and dig them down and cart them off, and never a
cent to pay, no more than for the privilege of picking blackberries.
The stranger who is buried here, what liberal-hearted landed proprietor
among us grudges him six feet of rocky pasture?

Nevertheless, cheap, after all, as our land is, and much as it is
trodden under foot, I, for one, am proud of it for what it bears; and
chiefly for its three great lions--the Great Oak, Ogg Mountain, and my
chimney.

Most houses, here, are but one and a half stories high; few exceed
two. That in which I and my chimney dwell, is in width nearly twice its
height, from sill to eaves--which accounts for the magnitude of its
main content--besides showing that in this house, as in this country at
large, there is abundance of space, and to spare, for both of us.

The frame of the old house is of wood--which but the more sets forth
the solidity of the chimney, which is of brick. And as the great wrought
nails, binding the clapboards, are unknown in these degenerate days, so
are the huge bricks in the chimney walls. The architect of the chimney
must have had the pyramid of Cheops before him; for, after that famous
structure, it seems modeled, only its rate of decrease towards the
summit is considerably less, and it is truncated. From the exact
mid