ready just to move right in and settle down and enjoy yourselves.”  

 I do not mean that all of these suggestions came at once. As here enumerated they represent the combined fruitage of several conversations on the subject. We listened attentively, making notes of the various notions for our comfort and satisfaction as they occurred to others. If any one had advanced the idea that we should install a private race track, and lay out nine holes, say, of a private golf course, we should have agreed to those items too. These things do sound so easy when you are talking them over and when the first splendid fever of land ownership is upon you! 

 Had I but known then what I know now! These times, when, going along the road, I pass a manure heap I am filled with envy of the plutocrat who owns it, though, at the same time, deploring the vulgar ostentation that leads him to spread his wealth before the view of the public. When I see a masonry wall along the front of an estate I begin to make mental calculations, for I understand now what that masonry costs, and know that it is cheaper, in the long run, to have your walls erected by a lapidary than by a union stonemason. 

 And as for a bluestone road—well, you, reader, may think bluestone is but a simple thing and an inexpensive one. Just wait until you have had handed to you the estimates on the cost of killing the nerve and cleaning out the cavities and inserting the fillings, and putting in the falsework and the bridgework, and the drains and the arches—and all! You might think dentists are well paid for such jobs; but a professional road contractor—I started to say road agent—makes any dentist look a perfect piker. 

 And any time you feel you really must have a swimming pool that is all your very own, take my advice and think twice. Think oftener than twice; and then compromise on a neat little outdoor sitz bath that is all your very own. 

 But the inner knowledge of these things was to come to us later. For the time being, pending the letting of contracts, we were content to enjoy the two most pleasurable sensations mortals may know—possession and anticipation: the sense of the reality of present ownership and, coupled with this, dreams of future creation and future achievement. We were on the verge of making come true the treasured vision of months—we were about to become abandoned farmers. 

 No being who is blessed with imagination can have any finer joy than this, I think—the joy of proprietorship of a strip of the green footstool. The soil you kick up when you walk over your 

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