The daily morning journal and courier., 1907-08-24
HAPPY LIFE ON AN UNPROGRESSIVE FARM There is Joy in Letting Nature
 Take it's Own Course. SOME HAPPY CITY PEOPLE Vacations Occupied in Not Re-
 claiming Old Farms.

(Elizabeth Woodbridge in the Out look.)
 Most of our friends, Jonathan's and mine, are occupying their summers in "reclaiming" old farms. We have an old farm, too, but we, I fear, are not reclaiming 1t, at least not very fast. 1 We have made neither formal gardens nor water gardens nor rose arches; we have not built marble swimming tanks, nor even cement ones; we have not naturalized forget-me-nots in the brook or narcissus in the meadows; we have not erected tea houses or choice knolls, and after six years of occupancy there is still not a pergola or a sun-dial on the place; And yet we are happy.
 To be happy on farm like ours one must, fancy, be either very old or very unprogressive. While we are waiting to grow comfortably old, we are willing to be considered unpro- gressive.
 Very old and very, very unprogres- sive is the farm itself. There is noth- ing on it but old apple trees, old lilac bushes, old rocks and old associations -and, to be sure. the old red house. But the old rocks, piled on the hill- sides, are unfamiliarly picturesque whether dark and dripping in the summer rains or silver gray in the summer suns The lilaes are delight | f,y1 T,, on wave of fragrance in through the little windows, penetrating even to the remotest corners of the dim old attic. while all day long about their pale lavender pray; the great yellow and black butterfly hangs t1atteringly. Best of all is the orchard; the old apple trees blossom prodigally for brief season in May, blossom in rosy-white, in cream white, In pure white, In green white, transforming the lane and the hill slopes into bower smothering the old house, in beauty breeding over it, on still moonlight nights,in pale clouds of sweetness. And then comes a wind. with a drenching rain, and tears away all the pretty petals and buries them in the grass below. But there are sell dom any apples all this exuberance~ of beauty is but dream of youth, not a Ipromise of fruitage. Jonathan, indeed, Itells me that if we want the trees to bear we must keep pigs in the orchard to root up the ground and eat the wormy fruit as it falls, but under these conditions I would rather not have the apples The orchard is old; why not leave it to dream and rest and dream again?
 The old associations are, admit, of a somewhat mixed character, There is the romance of the milk-room door, through which, in hoary ages past, the l"hired girl" at the ripe. age of twelve, Ieloped with her sixteen-year old lover; there is the story of the ceiling nail, a Ishuddery one, handed down from yet more remote antiquity; there are, tales of the ball room" on the second floor, of the old lightning-riven locust stump of the origin of the new wing of the house-still caled new though a century old. Not a spot in doors or out, but has its clustering memories
 Such an enveloping atmosphere of associations, no matter what their quality, in place where generations have lived and died, is of itself a qui- citing thing. Life, incrusted with tra- dition, like a ship weighted with bar nacles, moves more and more slowly; the past appears more real than the present. To the old this seems nat ural and right, to others it is often de- pressing, but Jonathan and l like it., Our barnacle-clogged ship pleases us --pleases me because love the slow drifting motion, pleases Jonathan be- cause-I regret to admit it--he thinks he can get all the barnacles off-and then!--
 For, whereas my unprogressiveness is absolute and unqualified, Jonathan's is, I have discovered, tainted by a sneaking optimism, an ineradicable desire and hope of improvement, which though it does not blossom rankly in pergolas and tea-houses, is none the less there, lurking menace It inspires his suggestion regarding pigs in the orchard, 1t showed itself even more clearly in the matter of the hens
 I have always liked hens, I doubt if mine are very proftable--the farm Is not in general a source of profit, and we cherish no delusions about it l-but I do not keep them for pecuni- ary gain. If they chance to lay eggs, so much the better; if they furnish forth my table with succulent broiIers, with nutritious coasters, with ambro- sial chicken-patties, I am not unap- preciative; but I realize that all these things might be had from my neigh bors' barnyards What l primarily value my own hens for is their com- panionship. Talk about the compan- ionship of dogs and cats! Cats walk about my home, sleek and superior; they make me feel that am there on sufferance. One cannot even laugh al them, their manner is so perfect Dogs, on the other hand, develop an unreasoning and tyrannous devotion to their masters, which is not really good for either, but is morbidly grat- flying to sentimental natures.
 But hens! No decorous superiority here, no mush of devotion. No; for varied folly, for rich and highly de- ,veloped perversities, combining all that is choicest of masculine and fem mine foible-for this, and much more l l,