things!

The road was a trail again for a mile or two. It led once
more through the underbrush-wilderness interspersed with
poplar bluffs. Then it became by degrees a real "high-class"
Southern Prairie grade. I wondered, but not for long.
Tall cottonwood bluffs, unmistakably planted trees,
betrayed more farms. There were three of them, and,
strange to say, here on the very fringe of civilization
I found that "moneyed" type--a house, so new and up-to-date,
that it verily seemed to turn up its nose to the traveller.
I am sure it had a bathroom without a bathtub and various
similar modern inconveniences. The barn was of the
Agricultural-College type--it may be good, scientific,
and all that, but it seems to crush everything else around
out of existence; and it surely is not picturesque--unless
it has wings and silos to relieve its rigid contours.
Here it had not.

The other two farms to which I presently came--buildings
set back from the road, but not so far as to give them
the air of aloofness--had again that friendly, old-country
expression that I have already mentioned: here it was
somewhat marred, though, by an over-rigidity of the lines.
It is unfortunate that our farmers, when they plant at
all, will nearly always plant in straight lines. The
straight line is a flaw where we try to blend the work
of our hands with Nature. They also as a rule neglect
shrubs that would help to furnish a foreground for their
trees; and, worst of all, they are given to importing,