In a way, that is rather typical of most of the rurality found within the boundaries of these modern aggregations or trusts of large and small towns, and intervening country, held together (more or less) by one name, under one municipal government, and called a "city" by legislature. There is plenty that is not at all city-like within the city walls--called limits--there is plenty of nature, but in most cases those wanting to commune with it are reminded that it is no longer within the domain of nature. The city has stretched out its hand, and the mark of the beast can usually be seen. You can find not only rural seclusion and bucolic simplicity, but the rudeness and crudeness of the wilderness and primeval forest; indeed, even forest fires have been known in Greater New York. But the trouble is that so often the bucolic simplicity has cleverly advertised lots staked out across it; the rural seclusion shows a couple of factory chimneys on the near horizon. The forest fire was put out by the fire department. There are numerous peaceful duck-ponds in the Borough of Queens, for instance, as muddy and peaceful as ever you saw, but so many of them are lighted by gas every evening. Besides the fisheries, there is profitable oyster-dredging in several sections of this city; and in at least one place it can be seen by electric light. There are many potato-patches patrolled by the police. [Illustration: One of the Farmhouses that Have Come to Town. The old Duryea House, Flushing, once used as a head-quarters for Hessian officers.] Not far from the geographical centre of the city there are fields where, as all who have ever commuted to and from the north shore of Long Island must remember, German women may be seen every day in the tilling season, working away as industriously as the peasants of Europe, blue skirts, red handkerchiefs about their heads, and all: while not far away, at frequent intervals, passes a whining, thumping trolley-car, marked Brooklyn Bridge. [Illustration: East End of Duryea House, where the Cow is Stabled.] In another quarter, on a dreary, desolate waste, neither farm land, nor city, nor village, there stands an old weather-beaten hut, long, low, patched up and tumbled down, with an old soap-box for a front doorstep--all beautifully toned by time, the kind amateurs like to sketch, when found far away from home in their travels. The thing that recalls the city in this case, rather startlingly, is a rudely lettered sign, with the S's turned the wrong way, offering lots for sale in Greater New York.