CHAPTER I

AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL PASSAGES

Of the early influences and experiences which contributed to Mr. Olmsted’s unconscious preparation for his later professional practice, we have fortunately a considerable record. Towards the close of the seventies, when he was harried beyond measure by the New York politicians, he set down some fragmentary autobiographical notes as the first part of an intended book reviewing American social and political conditions.

In a little prefatory note, he says:

... I offer a small contribution of individual experience towards the history of the latter half of the first century of the American republic,--the period in which the work of the railroad, the electric telegraph, the ocean steamship, the Darwinian hypothesis, and of Universal suffrage began; in which what is called the temperance reformation and the abolition of slavery have occurred; in which millions of people have been concentrating at New York, Philadelphia, Boston, Baltimore, Cincinnati, Chicago, St. Louis, and San Francisco, while rural neighborhoods in New England, Virginia, the Carolinas and Georgia have been rapidly losing population and still more rapidly losing various forms of wealth and worth.

The book was never written, but he preserved such pages of manuscript as he found time to scribble off,--often at night when the strain of his bitter fight for the right development of the Central Park left him sleepless and when he turned with relief to the recollections of a simple and harmonious social group.

PASSAGES IN THE LIFE OF AN UNPRACTICAL MAN

His teachers are the people, books, animals, plants, stones and earth round about him.--PHILIP GILBERT HAMERTON.

My father was well fitted to live only in a highly organized community in which man’s stint is measured out to him according to his strength. As the world is going he was perhaps as fortunately placed in this respect as he well could be. Yet the world was driving along so fast that he lived in perplexity between his self-distrust and disposition to acquit himself fully in his proper part, and the supposed demands of Society, Religion and Commerce.

The affectations by which he aimed to hide his unreadiness were so transparent and his real qualities had so little of brilliancy that he passed with others, even with many of his friends, for a man of much less worth, ability and attainments than he was.

If one had said to my father that he was highly sensitive to beauty he would have straightened himself, coughed and bridled like a girl, in the desire to accept flattery with becoming deprecation and admission. And he would probably soon after try to justify the compliment by referring admiringly to something which he thought had the world’s stamp of beauty upon it, quite possibly something which, but for the stamp, would be odious to him.

He rarely talked even in his family on matters at all out of the range of direct and material domestic interests, and in a company where lively conversation was going on, would sit silent and even answer questions unfrankly and with evident discomfort. Yet though his communion with others was never wordy, a decided companionship was always necessary to his comfort, and his silence was never churlish.

His sensitiveness to the beauty of nature was indeed extraordinary, judging from the degree in which his habits were affected by it; for he gave more time and thought to the pursuit of this means of enjoyment than to all other luxuries, and more than any man I have known who could not and would not talk about it or in any way make a market of it.

My mother died while I was so young that I have but a tradition of memory rather than the faintest recollection of her. While I was a small schoolboy if I was asked if I remembered her I could say “Yes; I remember playing on the grass and looking up at her while she sat sewing under a tree.” I now only remember that I did so remember her, but it has always been a delight to me to see a woman sitting under a tree, sewing and minding a child.

My [step-]mother’s character was simpler than my father’s, but she also had a strong love of nature and her taste was more cultivated and had more of her own respect.

My father when a young man was fond of riding and before I could be trusted alone on a horse was in the habit of taking me sitting on a pillow before him. While still very young I rode by his side.

The happiest recollections of my early life are the walks and rides I had with my father and the drives with my father and [step-]mother in the woods and fields. Sometimes these were quite extended, and really tours in search of the picturesque. Thus before I was twelve years old I had been driven over the most charming roads of the Connecticut Valley and its confluents, through the White Hills and along most of the New England coast from the Kennebeck to the Naugatuck. We were our own servants, my father seldom fully trusting strangers in these journeys with the feeding, cleaning or harnessing of his horses. We rested long in pleasant places; and when at noon we took the nags out and fed them by the roadside, my father, brother and I would often wander far looking for a bathing place and an addition of fresh wild berries for the picnic dinner which my mother would have set out in some well-selected shady place.

I had also before I was twelve traveled much with my father and mother by stage coach, canal and steamboat, visiting West Point, Trenton Falls, Niagara, Quebec, Lake George.

I recollect less of any enjoyment I may then have had than of my impression of the enjoyment my father and mother constantly found in scenery. Yet they could have talked little of it, both being of silent habits; and I am sure that they did not analyze, compare and criticise.

These reflections rise naturally when I review the conditions of my education, for although I was much separated from my father and few men have less aptness, inclination or ability than he had to give oral instruction, I see that the unpremeditated and insensible influence which came to me from him was probably the strongest element in my training. I see also that my father may have unwittingly disclosed to me more of his nature than to any one else. One of two or three incidents that remain in my mind will show what I mean. On a Sunday evening we were crossing the meadows alone. I was tired and he had taken me in his arms. I soon noticed that he was inattentive to my prattle and looking in his face saw in it something unusual. Following the direction of his eyes, I said: “Oh! there’s a star.” Then he said something of Infinite Love with a tone and manner which really moved me, chick that I was, so much that it has ever since remained in my heart.

Brought up in a superstitious faith in preaching and didactic instruction, and knowing how little he could by deliberate purpose do for me in that way, my father’s affection and desire to “do right by the boy” made him always eager to devolve as much as practicable of the responsibility of my education upon ministers.

I was placed successively in charge of six ministers. That this was not a choice of schoolmasters appears from the fact that while living with three of them I was, with my father’s knowledge, sent out by them to day schools--twice to the common school--and that only one himself gave me regular instruction. In every case, too, I was for the most part turned over for what is commonly called religious instruction to Sunday school teachers,--that is to say, vain, ignorant and conceited big boys and girls,--parrots or quacks at the business.

The first of these ministers, who became my father by deputy when I was but six years old, was the pastor of a thoroughly rural parish. The surface of the country was rugged, the soil, except in small patches, poor; the farms consequently large and the settlement scattered; there was one little general store at which the weekly mail was distributed; there was no public house, but near the meetinghouse some cabins had been built with fireplaces made of field stone in which families who came from far could get warm and eat their snack between the Sunday services. (I think Sunday was then called Sunday and that the fashion of calling it Sabbath came in afterwards or had not yet reached this place.)

The accumulation of results of labor in several generations was chiefly conspicuous in the stone walls which divided the fields.

I suppose that the large family in which I lived, enjoyed more luxury than any other, but I doubt if, one year with another, four hundred dollars in money passed its hands. Every household, however, was self-supporting and none so needy that it would not resent an offer of gratuitous assistance unless it were in such neighborly kindness as the poorest might offer the richest. There was a single family of vagabond habits who sometimes came to the store and bartered small peltry chiefly for tobacco and rum, and once when they had done so betook themselves to a Sunday house and shut themselves up in it for a deliberate drunk. But even this family which was distinguished and prayed for as “the poor” kept up at least a profession of supporting themselves honestly. They probably owned the cabin they lived in and a small piece of mountain land about it. If not, I think they were the only family that did not own some land and till it.

Every one made long days’ work; the parson was diligent and traveled far every week on his pastoral duties. He worked with his own hands a little farm from which the family living was helped out. He kept a horse and cow. He entertained a good deal of company,--agents of benevolent societies and traveling preachers as well as family friends, parishioners and the families of neighboring ministers; but he had no hired man servant and the only maid was a young girl, probably a relative of his wife’s who often sat at the table with us and before I left was married, perhaps to another minister. There was another pupil, a big boy who was reading Greek with the parson and who paid for his tutorship by helping in the farm work. On the parson’s little farm we had cows and swine and sheep, turkeys, geese, fowls and bees. Besides the commoner farm crops, we raised flax and spun it. We had an orchard and sent apples to a neighboring cider mill. I remember seeing the parson grafting scions into the trees. I remember also the beating a pan when the bees swarmed, helping to pick the geese, helping to wash the sheep, setting up the martin box, going with yarn to the weavers, helping to make soap and to dip candles.

It seems to me that while I was here, though only six years old, I was under no more constraint than a man; that I went where I liked, did what I liked and, especially, that I had a hand in everything that was going on in the neighborhood. When I saw other boys going barefoot, I threw away my shoes and was no more required to wear them except on Sundays. Every house, every room, every barn and stable, every shop, every road and highway, every field, orchard and garden was not only open to me but I was everywhere welcome. With all their hard-working habits no one seemed to begrudge a little time to make life happy to such a bothering little chap as I must have been. Such a thing as my running into danger even from bad company would seem not to have been thought of.

I remember very distinctly wandering off by myself in the evening to the store and sitting there listening to such talk as happened; going to look in at the window of the Sunday house to see the drunken poor folks; going with boys to smoke out woodchucks from their burrows, to get rabbits in winter out of stone walls, to trap mink in steel traps and quail in figure-four traps. I remember going with rye to the grist mill, riding on the sacks behind some man or bigger boy; going at night to see a charcoal burning and then eating potatoes baked in ashes. I am often reminded of the odor that filled the air. Spending a day and night at a distant sugar camp and then sleeping in a wigwam of bark. Making pastoral visits to sick people with uncle,--so I called him though he was no family relation. I remember when a man came to say that a sick child was dead, and to get the key of the meetinghouse. I went with him and saw him strike three strokes on the iron triangle which hung suspended by strips of cowhide from the beams of the belfry by which the tidings were sent to all within hearing; and immediately women began to come from all directions to show their sympathy to the stricken parents. The loss of a single little child stirred every heart in every household. We were dismissed early from school next day and went to see the coffin made.

I remember seeing the boards stained with a red wash and varnished. We saw the grave dug and helped to take out the bier and dingy pall from the little house in the graveyard where they were kept. We walked in the funeral procession. I remember the parson’s reading the usual notice in meeting the next Sunday. “It having pleased God to remove by death the infant child of Reuben and Rebecca Wilson, the afflicted parents, with the aged grandmother, the surviving children and other relatives ask the prayers of the congregation that this bereavement may be blessed to their spiritual and eternal good.” As each class of the mourners was designated, they stood up in their pew, and many of the women looking on had tears in their eyes. I remember that I wondered why uncle did not pray that the child should be raised at once and brought back to her parents, and I tried it myself when I went to bed.

I remember being taken up by a sleighing party and driven far by moonlight to a large house where I saw flip made by the kitchen fire; saw the parson’s girl drink it and be merry; saw romping games played around the great chimney and when finally I fell asleep, I was put to bed to be taken home in the midst of a furious snowstorm in the bitter morning by one of the boys who treated me to an upset in a snow-drift.

I don’t quite see how the people old and young--even the drunkard--could be on such good terms with the parson as it seems to me they were. I certainly have seen nothing like it since. I think that the temperance reformation was just beginning and my uncle preached and prayed in the meeting, in the school and in the family against intemperance, but total abstinence was not yet insisted on. The Anti-slavery agitation had not arisen. Divisions on these two questions I understand were afterwards so bitter that half the congregation refused to come to meeting or to contribute to the support of the minister, who finally was obliged to ask for a dismissal on account of the extreme privations to which his family became reduced.

I learned to read in a little brown schoolhouse on the bank of a brook in the midst of the woods. I remember chestnut, hemlock, birch and alder trees about it and near by thickets of mountain laurel. The brook must have been a small one for we made a pool by damming it, into which we put little trout and frogs that we caught with our hands, and from which we filled the drink-water pail of the school. The ground was strewn with rocks and the brook made a crooked way among them with much babbling. I remember beds of fragrant mint along its banks and of pennyroyal on the drier roadside. Here too, by an old stone fence we drew out sassafras roots and in a marshy place at the foot of the hill we pulled the sweetflag root from the black mire.

The narrow road passed on the other side of the schoolhouse and sometimes, when wheels were heard approaching, our mistress would stop short and cry: “Your elders are coming. Make your manners! Make your manners!” and we hastened to stand in line at the roadside, the boys to bow, the girls to courtesy. Even when at play and out of sight of the schoolhouse the boys would stop and take off their hats if any much older person came near. We were eager to do it, which perhaps is to be accounted for by the fact that we saw so few people, and that no man would be in such haste or so absorbed in other duties that he could not acknowledge the courtesy and smile or say a pleasant word to us.

I was a favorite with the mistress. When she was married and was starting for the Western Reserve in a chaise with a horse-hide trunk, studded with brass nails, hung on behind, she stopped at our house to see me. She cried a little when she kissed me. Did I cry also? I think not.

I dimly recall much more that was quaint, and that it is harder to believe in, of the habits and customs of the parish, but I recall nothing that was not kindly or that I do not thoroughly respect.

One of the most incredible of my recollections is that of the serious and respectful interest taken by all classes of the people in the annual spring parade of the militia, and first that the drummer should have come to the parson for advice as he did weeks beforehand in regard to the drum head. Its renewal and the manner of it being determined, I went with a squad to a distant currier’s where a sheep skin was selected, bargained and paid for in seed potatoes. After it had been prepared and mounted, the drummer and fifer practiced at the store every night, Sundays excepted, until the day of the muster.

On the Sunday before, some of the officers appeared at meeting in

## partial uniform. It was questioned at dinner whether this was a good

custom; whether it did not minister more to personal vanity than to any good. The parson, however, regarded it as a suitable mark of respect to the house of God and remarked that the military arm of the republic had no strength except in its dependence on the Almighty. The approaching occasion was remembered in his prayers.

When the day came and the long roll was beaten in front of the meetinghouse, about fifty true yeomen[3] fell in and answered to their names. Nearly all wore parts of what had once been uniforms. Very few were without a black and red plume bound on the left side of their hats. The privates all had muskets, but I have an impression that the non-commissioned officers or some of them carried lances or halberds. The commissioned officers were in full military suits, not that these had been made to fit them, for I think that they had been obtained for a consideration from their predecessors and dated back to the last war. They had swords and enormous _chapeau bras_ with plumes and also wore leather stocks and silk sashes. The company was drilled, marched, counter-marched, dismissed for dinner, reassembled and, at length, late in the day, a sergeant with a guard of honor was sent to the parsonage and the minister escorted to the ground. On his arrival he was duly saluted by the Company which then formed in hollow square, the minister, commissioned officers, “music” and the Company flag in the centre. The minister delivered a short discourse, made a long prayer and, after being thanked by the Captain, was re-escorted to the parsonage. There were few inhabitants of the parish, old or young, who were not present at this ceremony, as many as possible standing, men and boys with their hats removed, on the long wooden steps of the meetinghouse at the foot of which the square had been formed.

The Company being again brought into line the Captain said a few words of compliment, closing nearly as follows:

“You are now about to be dismissed for the day and I hope that nothing will occur after the dismissal which will lessen the respect which your exemplary conduct, while under military discipline, has been calculated to inspire in the hearts of the ladies. I will only add that after the dismissal I shall give a treat at the north Sunday house which you are all heartily invited to partake of.” Here a private stepped out and called for three cheers for Captain Fowler, which were given, the drum rolling and the flag waving.

In the Sunday house, pitchers, glasses, and plates of crackers, cheese and gingerbread were set out and under their influence, the earnestness which had so far characterized the proceedings gave way to a certain temperate degree of hilarity, forced and creaking.

After supper a drum and fife concert concluded the solemn patriotic festival, the last piece performed being Old Hundred.

I do not know whether it was before or after this that I spent several months with my uncle at Geneseo, where I remember being taken to see Indians making baskets, to visit at a house in the dooryard of which there was a fawn and at which a beautiful woman gave me sweetmeats, and that I was sometimes driven rapidly and silently over the turf of the bottom lands among great trees.

I was for months again the smallest boy among sixty at a boarding school, where I was placed under the special care of another clergyman, of whom I remember nothing after my father and mother drove away. Here I suffered in many cruel ways, and I still carry the scars of more than one kind of the wounds I received. I was taken away suddenly when one of the big boys wrote to his father, who sent the letter to mine, that a teacher had lifted me up by my ears and had so pinched one of them that it bled. My father had not thought of taking me away when I wrote--I think it must have been in my first letter to him--that there had been a revival in the school; that I had experienced religion, that I had had a prayer party in my bedroom to pray for his conversion and that I wished him to read a certain tract, the title of which I forget.

After this I lived for six months or more at home. But home with me had many branches, for there were no less than ten households of grandparents, granduncles and uncles in which, for all that I recollect, I was as welcome and intimate and as much at home as if I had been born to them. My father’s grandfather had five sons, all of whom had, I think, been seafaring men before the revolution. One had sailed in a letter of marque, was taken prisoner and died in the hulk at the Wallabout; another who was more successful than the rest in acquiring wealth and honors was carried to a peaceful grave before my day. Another was over ninety years old when I was born. I dimly recollect him, living in a large, rambling old farm house, of which he was the only occupant except his housekeeper. The fourth was also over ninety when I rode his knee. He had served the young republic both on sea and land and was the hero of a very daring and shrewd exploit, having, with three American seamen and two negroes whom he compelled to assist him, recaptured a valuable prize vessel on the high seas and brought her safely in. They were all infirm from wounds and rheumatism and I remember my grandfather out of his arm chair but once. He then walked a little way with me in a warm spring day, supporting himself with a long Malacca cane, which I now own, held with both hands. Leaning against a fence he pointed out a hang-bird’s nest in one of a row of elms near us and then told me that he had helped his father to plant the trees, describing how small they were at the time. I wanted my father to let me help him plant trees and he did, but they were not placed with sufficient forecast and have since all been cut down. But great-grandfather’s trees stand yet and the hang-birds yet have their home in them.

Then I lived for a few months chiefly with my grandmother, going irregularly to a village school, but being educated more I think through some old novels, plays and books of travels that I found in a sea chest in her garret. I actually read at this time much of Zimmerman on _Solitude_, Sterne’s _Sentimental Journey_ and the _Vicar of Wakefield_. I have the same volumes now, and I never have such a puzzling sense of double life as when I see some of Coleman’s plays on the stage.

I suppose these readings developed the talent which I must have temporarily possessed two or three years later, when I could hire other boys to do my chores by telling them stories,--no doubt but partially of my own invention.

Then I spent nearly five years, vacations excepted, in the home of a minister who undertook, with God’s help, to bring up four select pupils in the fear of the Lord, making no distinction between them and his own children. For their accommodation he had bought and moved a small, old country store alongside the parsonage proper, in the cellar of which he stowed cabbages and roots, on the ground floor had a work-shop and harness room, and in the second story the boys’ beds, desks and benches.

The clapboards were warped and shackling and the winter pressed us hard. The heating apparatus was a sheet-iron stove, if I am not mistaken made by the parson himself. The parson’s salary was nominally $500 a year but the people being poor and money scarce he took much of it in “produce”--firewood, for instance, which was invariably delivered when the sledding was good and mostly in logs. As soon as winter came, the duty was put on me to keep up the fire one day in four, and to provide wood I had to cut and split these logs, using a beetle and wedges for the larger ones; then carry the wood to the school and up stairs--all in play-time--make the fire before day and keep it up till bedtime. I was eight years old and small of my age.

The parsonage had a small back kitchen in which there was a wooden sink; outside the door stood an open water butt with a spigot at the bottom. After we had dressed by lamplight in the morning and perhaps broken a path through the snow to “the other house,” we opened the back kitchen door and in turn drew water in a cast-iron skillet about six inches in diameter out of which with the aid of home-made soft soap, held at a corner of the sink in a gourd, we washed our hands and faces. A roller towel hung upon the wall for the use of all the family. On Saturday night, hot water was furnished us and we were expected to wash our ears, neck and feet. Our meals were eaten in the kitchen and here, on the bare floor, we twice a day kneeled in prayers.

The parson’s son, a weakly boy who afterwards died of consumption, lived in the house with the family. The four boarder boys had the “store” all to themselves except in school hours.

They were kept in order in this way: At irregular intervals, when they were expected to be studying their lessons, the parson came to the foot of the stairs, took off his shoes, crept softly up and stood with his ear at the latch. If there was no disorder, he slipped down again and we perhaps knew nothing of his visit. If I was telling a story--my stories were generally of “run-aways”--the parson waited until I reached a situation of interest, when he would break in shouting “Oh! the depravity of human nature!” and seizing a ruler, a stick of firewood or a broom handle, go at us all pellmell over the head and shoulders.

* * * * *

A later biographical fragment, probably written in the nineties, carries on the story of Mr. Olmsted’s education.

FOOTNOTES:

[3] Mr. Olmsted was fond of the word “yeoman.” This was the signature he used for his Southern letters to the Times.

HINTS

AIDFUL TO ELEMENTARY SELF-EDUCATION IN

DESIGN

IN THE COMMON FIELDS OF LANDSCAPE GARDENING PROPER.

BY F. L. O.

Honorary Member of the American Institute of Architects and of the Boston Society of Architects; Author of a Journey in Texas, etc.

PREFACE

Something accrues from special attention continuously directed for many years to a particular field of observation and reflection, giving a value to counsel about it that would not be allowed on the ground of native talent or learning on the part of the counsel-giver.

## Partly for this reason I propose, by way of introduction, to give at

this point some account of my life.

But partly also I propose to do so from regard to a disposition generally prevalent to underrate the value of professional or bookish counsel on the subject of this book. This disposition grows largely out of an impression that the courses by which men come to set themselves up as professional advisers on this subject or to write books upon it are, like those of students in a school, of a kind to withdraw them in a great degree from nature and from the ordinary life of men, consequently from a ready, sympathetic understanding of their wants; that these courses tend to pervert their natures, lessen freedom of mind, restrain healthy impulses and make them creatures of rules and conventions. This impression is the deeper because of the influence unconsciously acting from an old idea associated with the word garden, the essence of gardening having been withdrawal from nature and restriction to artificial conditions. (_Garden_, _girdle_ and _girth_ are from the same root--signifying constraint.) A Gardener is thought of as a man working in accommodation to artificial restrictions.

Many times something expressive of this idea has been plainly said to me or possibly said of me and of my advice and work. Hundreds of times a prejudice of mind of this nature has been apparent in those seeking my counsel.

I hope the slight account I propose to give of myself may cause what is to follow after it to be read with less prejudice of this kind than it might otherwise be.

I can see that my pleasure began to be affected by conditions of scenery at an early age,--long before it could have been suspected by others from anything that I said and before I began to mentally connect the cause and effect of enjoyment in it. It occurred too, while I was but a half-grown lad, that my parents thought well to let me wander as few parents are willing their children should.

Within thirty miles of where they lived there were a score of houses of their kindred and friends at which I was always welcome. They were mostly farm houses and had near them interesting rivers, brooks, meadows, rocks, woods or mountains, those less rural had pleasant old gardens. Of the people two only shall be referred to particularly. One a poor scholar who, after a deep affliction, lived in seclusion with no occupation but that of reading good old books to which he had formed an attachment in happier days. One of his favorite authors was Virgil, and he took pleasure in reading and translating him to me. He was quaintly mild, courteous and ceremonious, of musing, contemplative habits, and in these and other respects so different from most men whom I knew that, as he commanded my respect and affectionate regard, I recognize him to have had a notable influence in my education.

The other had inherited a moderate competence and been brought up to no regular calling. He lived in an unusually fine old village house with an old garden, was given to natural science, had a cabinet, a few works of art and a notable small library. He was shy and absorbed and I took little from him directly, but he was kind and not so careful of his treasures that I could not cautiously use them as playthings and picture books. He introduced me to Isaac Walton. He had no man servant,--indeed no servants, his handmaids being of the order then called help, and he was on precisely the terms with them, as it now seems to me, that he might have been with helpful sisters, though they did not sit at table with him.

A man came from without the household for the heavier work of the place, giving but a small part of his time to it, and there was a boy to do the light chores who received no wages but worked for his board, books and schooling. One of the boys who thus became my playfellow afterwards made his way through college, studied law, and came to be a member of Congress and Governor of a State.

For the rest my kinsmen and friends were plain, busy, thrifty people, mostly farmers and good citizens.

If in my rambling habits I did not come home at night, it was supposed that I had strayed to some of these other homes where I would be well taken care of, and little concern was felt at my absence; but it several times occurred before I was twelve years old that I had been lost in woods and finding my way out after sunset had passed the night with strangers and had been encouraged by my father rather than checked in the adventurousness that led me to do so.

It was my good fortune also at this period to be taken on numerous journeys in company with people neither literary, scientific nor artistic, but more than ordinarily susceptible to beauty of scenery and who with little talking about it, and none for my instruction, plainly shaped their courses and their customs with reference to the enjoyment of it. As a small boy I made four such journeys, each of a thousand miles or more, two behind my father’s horses, and two mostly by stage coach and canal boat. Besides these many shorter ones. When fourteen I was laid up by an extremely virulent sumach poisoning, making me for some time partially blind, after which, and possibly as a result, I was troubled for several years with a disorder of the eyes, and the oculists advised that I should be kept from study.

It followed that, at the time my schoolmates were entering college, I was nominally the pupil of a topographical engineer[4] but really for the most part given over to a decently restrained vagabond life, generally pursued under the guise of an angler, a fowler or a dabbler on the shallowest shores of the deep sea of the natural sciences.

A hardly conscious exercise of reason in choosing where I should rest and which way I should be going in these vagrancies, a little musing upon the question what made for or against my pleasure in them, led me along to a point at which when by good chance the books fell in my way I was sufficiently interested to get some understanding of what such men as Price, Gilpin, Shenstone and Marshall thought upon the subject.

Rural tastes at length led me to make myself a farmer. I had several years of training on widely separated farms, then bought a small farm for myself which I afterwards sold in order to buy a larger, and upon this I lived ten years. I was a good farmer and a good neighbor, served on the school committee, improved the highways, was secretary of a local farmer’s club and of the County Agricultural Society, took prizes for the best crops of wheat and turnips and the best assortment of fruits, imported an English machine, and in partnership with a friend established the first cylindrical drainage tile works in America.

But during this period also I managed to make several long and numerous short journeys, generally paying my expenses by writing on rural topics for newspapers. As it would have been an extravagance otherwise, however, I first crossed the Atlantic in the steerage of a sailing vessel, and nearly always traveled frugally. In all these tours I took more interest than most travelers do in the arrangement and aspect of homesteads and generally in what may be called the sceneric character of what came before me.

The word _sceneric_ flows from my pen unbidden and I venture to let it stand. Some writers of late are using _scenic_ for the purpose it serves, but this is confusing, _scenic_ having been so long used with regard exclusively to affairs of the drama.

All this time interest in certain modest practical applications of what I was learning of the principles of landscape architecture was growing with me,--applications, I mean, for example, to the choice of a neighborhood, of the position and aspect of a homestead, the placing, grouping and relationships with the dwelling of barns, stables and minor outbuildings, the planning of a laundry yard and of conveniences for bringing in kitchen supplies and carrying away kitchen wastes, for I had found that even in frontier log cabins a good deal was lost or gained of pleasure according to the ingenuity and judgment used in such matters; applications also to the seemly position of a kitchen garden, of a working garden for flowers to be cut for the indoor enjoyment of them, to fixed outer floral and foliage decorations, to the determination of lines of outlook and of in-look and the removal or planting accordingly of trees, screens, hedges, windbreaks and so on, with some consideration of unity of foreground, middle ground and background, some consideration for sceneric effect from without as well as from within the field of actual operations. I planted several thousand trees on my own land and thinned out and trimmed with my own hand with reference to future pleasing effects a small body of old woodland and another of well-grown copse wood.

Never the slightest thought till I was more than thirty years old had entered my mind of practicing landscape gardening except as any fairly well-to-do, working farmer may, and in flower gardening or of any kind of decorative or simply ornamental gardening--any gardening other than such as I have indicated--I was far from being an adept.

But I gradually came to be known among my neighbors and friends as a man of some special knowledge, inventiveness and judgment in such affairs as I have mentioned, and to be called on for advice about them. At length, growing out of such little repute, I was unexpectedly invited to take a modest public duty and from this by promotions and successive unpremeditated steps was later led to make Landscape Architecture my calling in life....

I have since, partly on professional and partly on other occasions, continued to travel a great deal.... But a small part of my journeyings either in the old or the new world have been made by railways. I have traveled several thousand miles on foot and several thousand in the saddle and I have had rare opportunities for seeing people of all sorts in all parts of our land in their homes.

All the time interest in scenery, landscape, landscape architecture, has been strong with me.

Through these causes and because of the interest I have thus explained I have been much led into pointed conversations with men and women under a great variety of circumstances, while looking about their abodes or while following their chosen paths, roads and waters, with regard to the pleasure to be had in doing so and with direct reference to means of enhancing it or getting the better of circumstances restricting it.

FOOTNOTES:

[4] According to his father’s diary, Frederick began the study of engineering with Professor Barton of Andover, Mass., November 20, 1837.

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