t for a Sunday
drive.

As Warner once said to me, "young love in the country is a very solemn
thing," and this shy, serious pair slowed up as they passed, to see my
place. The piazza was gay with hanging baskets, vines, strings of beads
and bells, lanterns of all hues; there were tables, little and big, and
lounging chairs and a hammock and two canaries. The brightest geraniums
blossomed in small beds through the grass, and several long flower beds
were one brilliant mass of bloom, while giant sun-flowers reared their
golden heads the entire length of the farm.

It was gay, but I had hoped to please Beauty.

"What is that?" said the girl, straining her head out of the carriage.

"Don't know," said the youth, "guess it's a store."

The girl scrutinized the scene as a whole, and said decisively:

"No, 'taint, Bill--it's a saloon!"

That was a cruel blow! I forgot my flowers, walked in slowly and sadly
and carried in two lanterns to store in the shed chamber. I also
resolved to have no more flower beds in front of the house, star shaped
or diamond--they must all be sodded over.

That opinion of my earnest efforts to effect a renaissance at
Gooseville--to show how a happy farm home should look to the
passer-by--in short, my struggle to "live up to" the peacocks revealed,
as does a lightning flash on a dark night, much that I had not
perceived. I had made as great a mistake as the farmer who abjures
flowers and despises "fixin' up."

The pendulum of emotion swung as far back, and I almost disliked the
innocent cause of my decorative folly. I began to look over my accounts,
to study my check books, to do some big sums in addition, and it made me
even more depressed. Result of these mental exercises as follows: Rent,
$40 per year; incidental expenses to date, $5,713.85. Was there any good
in this silly investment of mine? Well, if it came to the very worst, I
could kill the couple and have a rare dish. Yet Horace did not think its
flesh equal to an ordinary chicken. He wrote:

I shall ne'er prevail
To make our men of taste a pullet choose,
And the gay peacock with its train refuse.
For the rare bird at mighty price is sold,
And lo! What wonders from its tail unfold!
But can these whims a higher gusto raise
Unless you eat the plumage that you praise?
Or do its glories when 'tis boiled remain?
No; 'tis the unequaled beauty of its train,
Deludes your eye and charms you to the feast,
For hens