When Bayard was two or three years old, his father purchased a farm about a mile from the village, and giving up his mercantile avocations, turned his whole attention to farming. On that farm Bayard spent the opening years of his life, and on one section of it did he build his beautiful home of “Cedarcroft.” “The beginning and the end is here— The days of youth; the silvered years.” How deeply he loved his home, how sincere his affection for the rolling fields, the chestnut and the walnut woodland, the old stone farm-house, the clumsy barn, the old highway, the acres of corn and wheat, the distant village and its quaint old church, can be seen in a thousand expressions finding place in his published works. His poetical nature opened to his view beautiful landscapes and charming associations which others would not detect. The birds sang in an intelligible language; the leaves on the corn entered into conversation; the lowing of the cows could be interpreted; and the rocks were romantic story-tellers. He loved them all. That farm was his Mecca in all his travels. When he left, he says he promised bird, beast, trees, and knolls, that he would return to them. To the writer, who went to Cedarcroft after the poet’s death, and who has so long loved and admired his poetry, it seemed as if the trees patiently awaited his return. All things in nature must have loved and trusted him, or they would not have confided to him so many of their secrets. Of the pastoral life in Pennsylvania he speaks with pleasing directness in his volume entitled “Home Pastorals.” In one place the aged farmer says:— “Well—well! this is comfort now—the air is mild as May, And yet ’tis March the twentieth, or twenty-first, to-day; And Reuben ploughs the hill for corn: I thought it would be tough; But now I see the furrows turned, I guess it’s dry enough. I’m glad I built this southern porch; my chair seems easier here: I haven’t seen as fine a spring this five and twenty year. And how the time goes round so quick: a week I would have sworn, Since they were husking on the flat, and now they plough for corn! Across the level Brown’s new place begins to make a show; I thought he’d have to wait for trees, but, bless me, how they grow! They say it’s fine—two acres filled with evergreens and things; But so much land! it worries me, for not a cent it brings. He has the right, I don’t deny, to please himself that way, But ’tis a bad example set, and leads young folks astray: Book-learning gets the upper hand, and work is slow and slack, And they that come long after us will find things gone to wrack. Well—I suppose I’m old, and yet it is not long ago When Reuben spread the swath to dry, and Jesse learned to mow, And William raked, and Israel hoed, and Joseph pitched with me, But such a man as I was then my boys will never be!