At a certain season of our life we are accustomed to consider every spot as the possible site of a house. I have thus surveyed the country on every side within a dozen miles of where I live. In imagination I have bought all the farms in succession, for all were to be bought, and I knew their price. I walked over each farmer's premises, tasted his wild apples, discoursed on husbandry with him, took his farm at his price, at any price, mortgaging it to him in my mind; even put a higher price on it -- took everything but a deed of it -- took his word for his deed, for I dearly love to talk -- cultivated it, and him too to some extent, I trust, and withdrew when I had enjoyed it long enough, leaving him to carry it on. This experience entitled me to be regarded as a sort of real-estate broker by my friends. Wherever I sat, there I might live, and the landscape radiated from me accordingly. What is a house but a sedes, a seat? -- better if a country seat. I discovered many a site for a house not likely to be soon improved, which some might have thought too far from the village, but to my eyes the village was too far from it. Well, there I might live, I said; and there I did live, for an hour, a summer and a winter life; saw how I could let the years run off, buffet the winter through, and see the spring come in. The future inhabitants of this region, wherever they may place their houses, may be sure that they have been anticipated. An afternoon sufficed to lay out the land into orchard, wood-lot, and pasture, and to decide what fine oaks or pines should be left to stand before the door, and whence each blasted tree could be seen to the best advantage; and then I let it lie, fallow, perchance, for a man is rich in proportion to the number of things which he can afford to let alone.

My imagination carried me so far that I even had the refusal of several farms -- the refusal was all I wanted -- but I never got my fingers burned by actual possession. The nearest that I came to actual possession was when I bought the Hollowell place, and had begun to sort my seeds, and collected materials with which to make a wheelbarrow to carry it on or off with; but before the owner gave me a deed of it, his wife -- every man has such a wife -- changed her mind and wished to keep it, and he offered me ten dollars to release him. Now, to speak the truth, I had but ten cents in the world, and it surpassed my arithmetic to tell, if I was that man who had ten cents, or who had a farm, or ten dollars, or all together. However, I let him keep the ten dollars and the farm too, for I had carried it far enough; or rather, to be generous, I sold him the farm for just what I gave for it, and, as he was not a rich man, made him a present of ten dollars, and still had my ten cents, and seeds, and materials for a wheelbarrow left. I found thus that I had been a rich man without any damage to my poverty. But I retained the landscape, and I have since annually carried off what it yielded without a wheelbarrow. With respect to landscapes,

我勘察一切，像一个皇帝，"I am monarch of all I survey,
谁也不能够否认我的权利。My right there is none to dispute."

I have frequently seen a poet withdraw, having enjoyed the most valuable part of a farm, while the crusty farmer supposed that he had got a few wild apples only. Why, the owner does not know it for many years when a poet has put his farm in rhyme, the most admirable kind of invisible fence, has fairly impounded it, milked it, skimmed it, and got all the cream, and left the farmer only the skimmed milk.
我时常看到一个诗人，在欣赏了一片田园风景中的最珍贵部分之后，就扬长而去，那些固执的农夫还以为他拿走的仅只是几枚野苹果。诗人却把他的田园押上了韵脚，而且多少年之后，农夫还不知道这回事，这么一道最可羡慕的、肉眼不能见的篱笆已经把它圈了起来，还挤出了它的牛乳，去掉了奶油，把所有的奶油都拿走了，他只把去掉了奶油的奶水留给了农夫。

The real attractions of the Hollowell farm, to me, were: its complete retirement, being, about two miles from the village, half a mile from the nearest neighbor, and separated from the highway by a broad field; its bounding on the river, which the owner said protected it by its fogs from frosts in the spring, though that was nothing to me; the gray color and ruinous state of the house and barn, and the dilapidated fences, which put such an interval between me and the last occupant; the hollow and lichen-covered apple trees, nawed by rabbits, showing what kind of neighbors I should have; but above all, the recollection I had of it from my earliest voyages up the river, when the house was concealed behind a dense grove of red maples, through which I heard the house-dog bark. I was in haste to buy it, before the proprietor finished getting out some rocks, cutting down the hollow apple trees, and grubbing up some young birches which had sprung up in the pasture, or, in short, had made any more of his improvements. To enjoy these advantages I was ready to carry it on; like Atlas, to take the world on my shoulders -- I never heard what compensation he received for that -- and do all those things which had no other motive or excuse but that I might pay for it and be unmolested in my possession of it; for I knew all the while that it would yield the most abundant crop of the kind I wanted, if I could only afford to let it alone. But it turned out as I have said.

霍乐威尔田园的真正迷人之处，在我看是：它的遁隐之深，离开村子有两英里，离开最近的邻居有半英里，并且有一大片地把它和公路隔开了；它傍着河流，据它的主人说，由于这条河，而升起了雾，春天里就不会再下霜了，这却不在我心坎上；而且，它的田舍和棚屋带有灰暗而残败的神色，加上零落的篱笆，好似在我和先前的居民之间，隔开了多少岁月；还有那苹果树，树身已空，苔薛满布，兔子咬过，可见得我将会有什么样的一些邻舍了，但最主要的还是那一度回忆，我早年就曾经溯河而上，那时节，这些屋宇藏在密密的红色枫叶丛中，还记得我曾听到过一头家犬的吠声。我急于将它购买下来，等不及那产业主搬走那些岩石，砍伐掉那些树身已空的苹果树，铲除那些牧场中新近跃起的赤杨幼树，一句话，等不及它的任何收拾了。为了享受前述的那些优点，我
决定干一下了；像那阿特拉斯一样，把世界放在我肩膀上好啦，——我从没听到过他得了哪样报酬，——我愿意做一切事：简直没有别的动机或任何推托之辞，只等付清了款子，便占有这个田园，再不受他人侵犯就行了；因为我知道我只要让这片田园自生自展，它将要生展出我所企求的最丰美的收获。但后来的结果已见上述。