And so we lived year after year. I am afraid that we
worshipped each other too much. We were in the
heart of a crowded city, but there was that in our lives
which tended a little to habits of loneliness, and I
suppose a moralist would say that our dangers lay in that
direction.

On the other hand, I am almost ashamed to say that,
as I sat in a seat I had made for myself in old Van der
Tromp's pear-tree, I would look upon my corn and peas and
squashes and tomatoes with a satisfaction which I believe
many a nobleman in England does not enjoy.

Till the youngest of the Fordyce heirs was of age,
and that would not be till 1880, this was all my own. I
was, by right of possession and my own labors, lord of
all this region. How else did the writers on political
economy teach me that any property existed!

I surveyed it with a secret kind of pleasure. I had
not abundance of pears; what I had were poor and few.
But I had abundance of sweet corn, of tomatoes, of peas,
and of beans. The tomatoes were as wholesome as they
were plentiful, and as I sat I could see the long shelves
of them which my mother had spread in the sun to ripen,
that we might have enough of them canned when winter
should close in upon us. I knew I should have potatoes
enough of my own raising also to begin the winter with.
I should have been glad of more. But as by any good