till had my ten cents, and seeds, and
materials for a wheelbarrow left. I found thus that I had been a rich
man without any damage to my poverty. But I retained the landscape, and
I have since annually carried off what it yielded without a wheelbarrow.
With respect to landscapes,

"I am monarch of all I survey,
My right there is none to dispute."

I have frequently seen a poet withdraw, having enjoyed the most valuable
part of a farm, while the crusty farmer supposed that he had got a few
wild apples only. Why, the owner does not know it for many years when
a poet has put his farm in rhyme, the most admirable kind of invisible
fence, has fairly impounded it, milked it, skimmed it, and got all the
cream, and left the farmer only the skimmed milk.

The real attractions of the Hollowell farm, to me, were: its complete
retirement, being, about two miles from the village, half a mile from
the nearest neighbor, and separated from the highway by a broad field;
its bounding on the river, which the owner said protected it by its fogs
from frosts in the spring, though that was nothing to me; the gray color
and ruinous state of the house and barn, and the dilapidated fences,
which put such an interval between me and the last occupant; the hollow
and lichen-covered apple trees, nawed by rabbits, showing what kind of
neighbors I should have; but above all, the recollection I had of it
from my earliest voyages up the river, when the house was concealed
behind a dense grove of red maples, through which I heard the house-dog
bark. I was in haste to buy it, before the proprietor finished getting
out some rocks, cutting down the hollow apple trees, and grubbing up
some young birches which had sprung up in the pasture, or, in short, had
made any more of his improvements. To enjoy these advantages I was ready
to carry it on; like Atlas, to take the world on my shoulders--I never
heard what compensation he received for that--and do all those things
which had no other motive or excuse but that I might pay for it and
be unmolested in my possession of it; for I knew all the while that it
would yield the most abundant crop of the kind I wanted, if I could only
afford to let it alone. But it turned out as I have said.

All that I could say, then, with respect to farming on a large scale--I
have always cultivated a garden--was, that I had had my seeds ready.
Many think that seeds improve with age. I have no doubt