nothing to be undone-everything was to be done. It was not exactly a virgin soil, but, like a lovely widow, it had lain fallow-a friendly farmer made use of that word-so long, that it would be grateful for the touch of a rake or a hoe. There was no garden, no fence, no orchard, and no fruit-trees of any kind except one apple-tree, but then the nurseries and a little labor would make this right.

An unpleasant suspicion crossed my mind that perhaps it would have been better if some of these things had been done to my hand, and that possibly I was not exactly the man to do them in the best way; but a second perusal of "Ten Acres Enough" was enough for me, and these absurd doubts were banished forever. If an uneducated mechanic could leave Philadelphia, rescue a decaying farm, and make it splendidly remunerative, why could not an educated lawyer from New York convert an uninjured farm into the eighth or ninth-we Americans have added a few to them-wonder of the world?

The affair was as simple as could be. With a classbook of botany, a recipe from Professor Mapes, a few cuttings of some wonderful new berry-of which, doubtless, there were plenty, and Bridgman's "Gardener's Assistant," the result was certain. It was merely a question of seeds, weeds, and manure-the

first and last to be encouraged, and the other to be eradicated.

After all, what is the wonderful science in farming? You put a seed in the ground, and it comes up—that is, if it does come up either a pea or a bean, a carrot or a turnip, and, with your best skill and greatest learning, you can not plant a pea and induce it to come up a bean, or convert a carrot into a turnip. As for planting, any fool can do that, and as for making it grow, the wisest man in the land. can not effect it. These and a few other similar arguments were entirely conclusive, and soon visions of the accomplished fact engrossed my mind.

I should have a neat, modest, small, but cosy little house; square, for economy's sake, but surrounded on all sides by a deep piazza; the garden should be filled with delicious vegetables, fruits, and berries, the earliest and best of their kinds; there should be a magnificent bed of asparagus-that king of the kitchen garden-a dozen long rows of strawberries, with fruit as luscious as a young girl's lips; Bartlett pears, early peas, peaches and cream—the latter only indirectly vegetable-cauliflowers, tomatoes, mushrooms, lettuce—every thing, in fact, that a gentleman eats when he can get it, and nothing that he eschews when he can do no better. The residue of the farm

was to be partly orchard and partly market garden, and this was to supply the family during the winter and pay the expenses of the household.

It is an immense satisfaction, of a hot evening in summer, even in the prematurely scorching days of June, to leave the city, after a long day of labor and trouble, and, rushing away with railroad speed into the country, to enjoy the delicious air and cool breeze, to sit beneath the outspreading trees, to wander through the woods, to bathe in the brook, to doze or smoke in the shade. The scent of the blossoms or the hay, or no smell at all, is such an exquisite relief from the customary odors of New York streets. The sun seems to lose half and the air to gain double its ordinary power. The pleasures are so innocent, the matters of interest so pure, the mind is braced but not wearied. The garden, whether kitchen or flower garden-those delightful adjuncts of a country place is such an infinite source of health, improvement, and delight. Man, confined to the city by dire necessity of money-making, recognizing the country as the natural sphere of his existence, dreams of a neat, quiet, retired country place, and books such as "Ten Acres Enough" persuade him to convert these dreams into realities.

I had always been troubled with similar visions,

although by a strange fatality my education in country matters had been wofully neglected, for I could hardly distinguish tomato-vines from egg-plants, and had not the remotest notion of modes or seasons of planting; but, now that there was a possibility that these imaginings might be realized, I was so charmed, that I resolved to record my experiences for the guidance and instruction of others. Thus it came about that this work was written; and if it is occasionally defective in style and irregular in plan, it is probably not more so than was my farming.

In looking over this introduction with a view to getting up a revised and enlarged edition of "Five Acres too Much" some fifteen years after the original was written, I find little to add and less to change in it. Finding my farm of five acres so remarkably improving, productive, and remunerative, I purchased one of twenty-five, afterwards another of a hundred and twenty, and now I own, have, hold, possess, till, and enjoy three hundred and fifty broad acres of health and fertility. Today I am the "past grand" of farmers, for I have raised the giant squash which admits to the innermost circles of the initiated. My readers will be glad to learn that Patrick is still with me. My farming and my writings on farm-life would have

been a failure without his efficient aid, and he still possesses that versatility of resources which in the original pages of this work almost elevated him to the rank of genius. I have added some of our modern experiences, and believe the patient reader will find them fully equal to anything I had previously chronicled. When my dear old friend and instructor Mr. Horace Greeley first read my humble contribution to the literature of plough and spade, he pronounced the unpleasant criticism that "the man who wrote that book ought to be kicked." But I felt that he was in error, or that possibly jealousy rather than public spirit dictated his cynical words, because "What I knew about Farming" differed in some essentials from what he knew, although we had in the main reached the same results. An additional chapter gives my subsequent operations, which were as gloriously successful as the previous ones, and prove beyond dispute the delight, benefit, and profit of rural occupations when they are intelligently conducted by a citizen of liberal education, scientific attainments, and vigorous back. THE AUTHOR.

May, 1885,