but," some one may exclaim, "you have put down nothing for straw and
hay, and horses require a great deal of both." Quite true; but then in
the country, if you do not keep a horse, you must buy manure for your
garden, and that will cost you quite as much as if you purchased
straw; and as for the hay, did it not come off the "four-acre farm?"

It is one of the great advantages of the country that nothing is lost,
and thus the straw which figures so largely in the bill of a London
corn-chandler, and which, when converted into manure, is the
perquisite of your groom, becomes in the country the means of
rendering your garden productive.

Before I resided in the country the pony cost me more than four times
the sum I have mentioned; the stable was apart from the house, and I
knew nothing for months of the bills run up on his account. I had once
a bill sent in for sugar! "Why, George, what can the pony want with
sugar?"

"Why, ma'am, you said some time ago that the pony looked thin, so
lately I have always mixed sugar with his corn; nothing fattens a
horse like sugar."

Now what could I complain of? This man had been recommended to me as
a "treasure," and one who would do his duty by the pony, which, I may
mention, was a very beautiful one, and a great pet; so if George
considered sugar good for him, what could I do but pay the bill, and
say, "Let him have sugar, by all means?" Not that "Bobby" was a bit the
fatter or better for having his corn sweetened. An intimate friend of
mine, who always kept three or four horses, laughed outright when I
told him that the pony had consumed such a quantity of sugar, and