rice. I walked over each farmer's premises, tasted his wild
apples, discoursed on husbandry with him, took his farm at his price, at
any price, mortgaging it to him in my mind; even put a higher price on
it--took everything but a deed of it--took his word for his deed, for I
dearly love to talk--cultivated it, and him too to some extent, I trust,
and withdrew when I had enjoyed it long enough, leaving him to carry it
on. This experience entitled me to be regarded as a sort of real-estate
broker by my friends. Wherever I sat, there I might live, and the
landscape radiated from me accordingly. What is a house but a sedes, a
seat?--better if a country seat. I discovered many a site for a house
not likely to be soon improved, which some might have thought too far
from the village, but to my eyes the village was too far from it. Well,
there I might live, I said; and there I did live, for an hour, a summer
and a winter life; saw how I could let the years run off, buffet the
winter through, and see the spring come in. The future inhabitants of
this region, wherever they may place their houses, may be sure that they
have been anticipated. An afternoon sufficed to lay out the land into
orchard, wood-lot, and pasture, and to decide what fine oaks or pines
should be left to stand before the door, and whence each blasted tree
could be seen to the best advantage; and then I let it lie, fallow,
perchance, for a man is rich in proportion to the number of things which
he can afford to let alone.

My imagination carried me so far that I even had the refusal of several
farms--the refusal was all I wanted--but I never got my fingers burned
by actual possession. The nearest that I came to actual possession was
when I bought the Hollowell place, and had begun to sort my seeds, and
collected materials with which to make a wheelbarrow to carry it on or
off with; but before the owner gave me a deed of it, his wife--every man
has such a wife--changed her mind and wished to keep it, and he offered
me ten dollars to release him. Now, to speak the truth, I had but ten
cents in the world, and it surpassed my arithmetic to tell, if I was
that man who had ten cents, or who had a farm, or ten dollars, or all
together. However, I let him keep the ten dollars and the farm too, for
I had carried it far enough; or rather, to be generous, I sold him the
farm for just what I gave for it, and, as he was not a rich man, made
him a present of ten dollars, and s