pool in "Chicken Brook" where the pickerel loved to
sport, and damming something, somewhere, I could create or evolve a
miniature pond, transplant water lilies, pink and white, set willow
shoots around the well-turfed, graveled edge, with roots of the
forget-me-not hiding under the banks their blue blossoms; just the
flower for happy lovers to gather as they lingered in their rambles to
feed my trout. And there should be an arbor, vine-clad and sheltered
from the curious gaze of the passers-by, and a little boat, moored at a
little wharf, and a plank walk leading up to the house. And--and oh, the
idealism possible when an enthusiastic woman first rents a farm--an
"abandoned" farm!

It may be more exact to say that my farm was not exactly "abandoned," as
its owner desired a tenant and paid the taxes; say rather depressed,
full of evil from long neglect, suffering from lack of food and general
debility.

As "abandoned farms" are now a subject of general interest, let me say
that my find was nothing unusual. The number of farms without occupants
in New Hampshire in August, 1889, was 1,342 and in Maine 3,318; and I
saw lately a farm of twenty acres advertised "free rent and a present of
fifty dollars."

But it is my farm I want you to care about. I could hardly wait until
winter was over to begin my new avocation. By the last of March I was
assured by practical agriculturists (who regarded me with amusement
tempered with pity) that it was high time to prune the lazy fruit trees
and arouse, if possible, the debilitated soil--in short, begin to "keep
it up."

So I left New York for the scene of my future labors and novel lessons
in life, accompanied by a German girl who proved to be merely an
animated onion in matters of cooking, a half-breed hired man, and a
full-bred setter pup who suffered severely from nostalgia and strongly
objected to the baggage car and separation from his playmates.

If wit is, as has been averred, the "juxtaposition of dissimilar ideas,"
then from "Gotham to Gooseville" is the most scintillating epigram ever
achieved. Nothing was going on at Gooseville except time and the milk
wagon collecting for the creamery. The latter came rumbling along every
morning at 4.30 precisely, with a clatter of cans that never failed to
arouse the soundest sleeper.

The general dreariness of the landscape was depressing. Nature herself
seemed in a lethargic trance, and her name was mud.

But with a house to fu