Publisher's Synopsis
This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1904 edition. Excerpt: ... that number of acres only make a fairsized farm, and those that contain between five hundred and one thousand acres are frequent. The English farmer rarely owns the land he tills; he rents it from the gentry. It is astonishing to an American that the farmers can pay the rents they are charged and live. Even poor soil commands a yearly rental of five dollars an acre, while the best land brings four times that sum. Farmhouses as a rule stand lonely and neighborless, dotting here and there the wide stretches of open country between villages. The villages themselves are made up of the homes of the gentry, tradespeople, and laborers. There may be a farmhouse or two on the outskirts, but never village clusters, such as we are familiar with in New England, where the farmhouses predominate. Ordinarily the farmhouse is a large, solid, two-story building of brick or stone. It stands on the borders of a big farmyard, and with the great barns and sheds, the cottages of the help, and the ricks of hay and grain close about, the whole has quite the look of a little hamlet. A part of the yard in front of the house is reserved for a lawn, where are various shrubs and flower-beds. Back of the house are a garden and a number of fruit trees. Among these are several apple trees, but the English trees of this genus do not have the hardiness and vigor they attain on our side of the Atlantic, and you never see large orchards of them. In one corner of the farmyard, or somewhere about the buildings, is usually a spot full of broken down machinery and other rubbish half hidden in a rank tangle of grass and weeds. In another corner is a pond of what looks to be stagnant and filthy water with apparently neither inlet nor outlet. This is the paddling-place of the...
