Barns in this once wild country had failed amazingly. Only one of any
character was left, and it had shrunk. Of old a structure of
possibilities intensely romantic, it was now dingy, pitiable,
insignificant. No reasonable person would consider holding a circus
there--admission ten pins for boys and five pins for girls.
Orchards, too, had suffered. Acres of them, once known to their last
tree, including the safest routes of approach by day or night, had been
cut down to make space for substantial but unexciting houses, quite like
the houses in anybody's town. Other orchards had shrunk to a few poor
unproductive trees so little prized by their owners that they could no
longer excite evil thoughts in the young.
Indeed, almost everything had shrunk. The church steeples, once of an
inconceivable height, were now but a scant sixty feet; and the buildings
beneath them, that once had vied with old-world cathedrals, were seen to
be but toy churches.
Especially had gardens shrunk. One that boasted the widest area in days
when it must be hoed for the advantage of potatoes insanely planted
there, was now a plot so tiny that the returned wanderer, amazedly
staring at it, abandoned all effort to make it occupy its old place in
his memory.
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