f ours,
who considered it a model country mansion and rural residence and
asked him how it compared with the generality of "country places" in
England.

It was amply sufficient, however, for my desires: but not being
mine, all my busy visions of gardening and green-house improvement,
etc., had to be indefinitely postponed. Subsequently, I took great
interest and pleasure in endeavoring to improve and beautify the
ground round the house; I made flower-beds and laid out
gravel-walks, and left an abiding mark of my sojourn there in a
double row of two hundred trees, planted along the side of the
place, bordered by the high-road; many of which, from my and my
assistants' combined ignorance, died, or came to no good growth. But
those that survived our unskillful operations still form a screen of
shade to the grounds, and protect them in some measure from the dust
and glare of the highway.

Cultivating my garden was not possible. My first attempt at
cultivating my neighbors' good-will was a ludicrous and lamentable
failure. I offered to teach the little children of my gardener and
farmer, and as many of the village children as liked to join them,
to read and write; but found my benevolent proposal excited nothing
but a sort of contemptuous amazement. There was the village school,
where they received instruction for which they were obliged and
willing to pay, to which they were accustomed to go, which answered
all their purposes, fulfilled all their desires, and where the small
students made their exits and their entrances without bob or bow,
pulling of forelock, or any other superstitious observance of
civilized courtesy: my gratuitous education was sniffed at alike by
parents and progeny, and of course the whole idea upon which I had
proffered it was mistaken and misplaced, and may have appeared to
them to imply an impertinent undervaluing of a system with which
they were perfectly satisfied; of the conditions of which, however,
I was entirely ignorant then. These people and their children wanted
nothing that I could give them. The "ladies" liked the make of my
gowns, and would have borrowed them for patterns with pleasure, and
this was all they desired or required from me.

On the first 4th of July I spent there, being alone at the place, I
organized (British fashion) a feast