The Project Gutenberg EBook of Adopting An Abandoned Farm, by Kate Sanborn

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Title: Adopting An Abandoned Farm

Author: Kate Sanborn

Release Date: April 14, 2004 [EBook #12021]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK ADOPTING AN ABANDONED FARM ***

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Adopting An Abandoned Farm

BY KATE SANBORN

1891

CONTENTS.

CHAPTER
I.--FROM GOTHAM TO GOOSEVILLE
II.--AUCTIONS
III.--BUYING A HORSE
IV.--FOR THOSE WHO LOVE PETS
V.--STARTING A POULTRY FARM
VI.--GHOSTS
VII.--DAILY DISTRACTIONS
VIII.--THE PROSE OF NEW ENGLAND FARM LIFE
IX.--THE PASSING OF THE PEACOCKS
X.--LOOKING BACK

An old farm-house with meadows wide,
And sweet with clover on each side.

MARION DOUGLASS.

ADOPTING AN ABANDONED FARM.

CHAPTER I.

FROM GOTHAM TO GOOSEVILLE.

I have now come to the farmer's life, with which I am exceedingly
delighted, and which seems to me to belong especially to the life of
a wise man.

CICERO.

Weary of boarding at seashore and mountain, tired of traveling in search
of comfort, hating hotel life, I visited a country friend at Gooseville,
Conn. (an assumed name for Foxboro, Mass.), and passed three happy weeks
in her peaceful home.

Far away at last from the garish horrors of dress, formal dinners,
visits, and drives, the inevitable and demoralizing gossip and scandal;
far away from hotel piazzas, with their tedious accompaniments of
corpulent dowagers, exclusive or inquisitive, slowly dying from too much
food and too little exercise; ennuied spinsters; gushing buds; athletic
collegians, cigarettes in mouths and hands in pockets; languid, drawling
dudes; old bachelors, fluttering around the fair human flower like
September butterflies; fancy work, fancy work, like Penelope's web,
never finished; pug dogs of the aged and asthmatic variety. Everything
there but MEN--they are wise enough to keep far away.

Before leaving this haven of rest, I heard that the old-fashioned
farm-house just opposite was for sale. And, as purchasers of real estate
were infrequent at Gooseville,