Adopting an Abandoned Farm

I am exceedingly delighted, and which seems to

CE

ort, hating hotel life, I visited a country friend at Gooseville, Conn. (an assu

clusive or inquisitive, slowly dying from too much food and too little exercise; ennuied spinsters; gushing buds; athletic collegians, cigarettes in mouths and hands in pockets; languid, drawling dudes; old bachelors, flutterin

ite was for sale. And, as purchasers of real estate were infrequent at Gooseville, it w

," with a "pie closet" and an upper tiny cupboard known as a "rum closet" and its pretty fire place-bricked up, but capable of being rescued from such prosaic "desuetude"; a large sunny dining-room, with a brick oven, an oven suggestive of

ssive "Forever-Never-Never-Forever" à la Longfellow. Then the long "shed chamber" with a wide swinging door open

floor, without even one window, convenient to retire to during severe thunder storms or to e

y room was blesse

grand old barn, with dusty, cobwebbed, hay-filled lofts, stalls for two horses and five cows;

touched the northern corner of the farm, and nothing makes one so willing to stay in a secluded spot as the certainty tha

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 th

ts owner desired a tenant and paid the taxes; say rather depressed, full o

ual. The number of farms without occupants in New Hampshire in August, 1889, was 1,342 and in Maine

last of March I was assured by practical agriculturists (who regarded me with amusement tempered with pity) that it wa

proved to be merely an animated onion in matters of cooking, a half-breed hired man, and a full-bred setter pup

ing epigram ever achieved. Nothing was going on at Gooseville except time and the milk wagon collecting for the creamery. The la

was depressing. Nature herself seemed in

on, even intelligence, appetite, and affection in the most primitive primordial atoms. So, after a little study, I found that the inhabita

e. There was also a "crazy party" at Way-back, the next village. This special form of lunacy I did not indulge in-farming was enough for me-but the painter who was enlivening my dining-room with a coating of vivid red and green, kindly told me all about it, how much I missed, and how the couple looked who took the first prize. The lad

show. But I bet youder beaten the hull

e and ten cents a roll, and cheap matting improved the f