He farms some fifteen hundred
acres,--"suitably divided," as the old-school agriculturists say, into
"woodland, pasture, and tillage." The farm-house--a large,
irregularly-built mansion of wood--stands upon a shelf of the hills
looking southward, and is shaded by century-old oaks. The barns and
out-buildings are grouped in a brown phalanx a little to the northward
of the dwelling. Between them a high timber gate opens upon the
scattered pasture lands of the hills; opposite to this and across the
farmyard, which is the lounging-place of scores of red-necked turkeys
and of matronly hens, clucking to their callow brood, another gate of
similar pretensions opens upon the wide meadow-land, which rolls with a
heavy "ground-swell" along the valley of a mountain river. A veteran oak
stands sentinel at the brown meadow-gate, its trunk all scarred with the
ruthless cuts of new-ground axes, and the limbs garnished in
summer-time with the crooked snathes of murderous-looking scythes.
The high-road passes a stone's-throw away; but there is little "travel"
to be seen; and every chance passer will inevitably come under the range
of the kitchen windows, and be studied carefully by the eyes of the
stout dairy-maid,--to say nothing of the stalwart Indian cook.
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