Did you know him ?" "I knew Nathan Toombs," I said.
I spent two days there with the Ransomes, for they would not hear of my leaving, and half of our spare time, I think, was spent in discussing Nathan Toombs.

I was not able to get him out of my mind for days, for his death was one of those events which prove so much and leave so much unproven.
I can recall vividly my astonishment at the first evidence I ever had of the strange old man or of his work.

It was not very long after I came to my farm to live.

I had taken to spending my spare evenings--the long evenings of summer--in exploring the country roads for miles around, getting acquainted with each farmstead, each bit of grove and meadow and marsh, making my best bow to each unfamiliar hill, and taking everywhere that toll of pleasure which comes of quiet discovery.
One evening, having walked farther than usual, I came quite suddenly around a turn in the road and saw stretching away before me an extraordinary sight.
I feel that I am conveying no adequate impression of what I beheld by giving it any such prim and decorous name as--a Hedge.

It was a menagerie, a living, green menagerie! I had no sooner seen it than I began puzzling my brain as to whether one of the curious ornaments into which the upper part of the hedge had been clipped and trimmed was made to represent the head of a horse, or a camel, or an Egyptian sphinx.
The hedge was of arbor vitae and as high as a man's waist.