the simple conditions of a country village and the easy refinement of
city life. The houses were large, the grounds ornate and ample, the
society decorously convivial. People could be fine--at least they were
thought very fine--without going to the British isles to recast their
home manners or take hints for the fashioning of their grounds and
mansions. There was what would be called to-day the English air about
the place and some of the people; but it was an inheritance, not an
imitation. Save in the bustling business segment, abutting the four
corners, where the old United States road bore off westward to Bucephalo
and the lakes, the few score houses were set far back from the highway
in a wilderness of shrubbery, secluded by hedges and shaded by an almost
primeval growth of elms or maples. The whole hamlet might be mistaken
for a lordly park or an old-fashioned German Spa. Family marketing was
mostly done in Warchester; hence the village shops were like Arabian
bazaars, few but all-supplying. The most pregnant evidence of the
approach of modern ways that tinged the primitive color of the village
life, was the then new railway skirting furtively through the meadows on
the northern limits, as if decently ashamed of intruding upon such
idyllic tranquillity. The little Gothic station, cunningly hidden behind
a clustering grove of oaks at a respectful distance from the Corners,
like the lodge of a great estate, reconciled those who had at first
fought the iron mischief-maker.

The public edifices of the town--the Episcopal church, the free academy,
the bank, the young ladies' seminary--were very unlike such institutions
in the bustling, treeless towns of to-day. Corinthian columns and Greek
friezes adorned these architectural evidences of Acredale's affluence
and taste. The village had grown up on private grounds, conceded to the
public year by year as the children and dependents of the founders
increased. The Spragues were the founders, and they had never been