Stephen White stood with his arms folded, leaning on the gate which shut
off, but seemed in no wise to separate, the front yard of the house in
which he lived from the public highway. There is something always pathetic
in the attempt to enforce the idea of seclusion and privacy, by building a
fence around houses only ten or twelve feet away from the public road, and
only forty or fifty feet from each other. Rows of picketed palings and
gates with latches and locks seem superfluous, when the passer-by can
look, if he likes, into the very centre of your sitting-room, and your
neighbors on the right hand and on the left can overhear every word you
say on a summer night, where windows are open.

One cannot walk through the streets of a New England village, without
being impressed by a sense of this futile semblance of barrier, this
touching effort at withdrawal and reticence. Often we see the tacit
recognition of its uselessness in an old gate shoved back to its farthest,
and left standing so till the very grass roots have embanked themselves on
each side of it, and it can never again be closed without digging away the
sods in which it is wedged. The gate on which Stephen White was leaning
had stood open in that way for years before Stephen rented the house; had
stood open, in fact, ever since old Billy Jacobs, the owner of the house,
had been carried out of it dead, in a coffin so wide that at first the
bearers had thought it could not pass through the gate; but by huddling
close, three at the head and three at the feet, they managed to tug the
heavy old man through without taking down the palings. This was so long
ago that now there was nobody left who remembered Billy Jacobs distinctly,
except his widow, who lived in a poor little house on the outskirts of the
town, her only income being that derived from the renting of the large
house, in which she had once lived in comfort with her husband and son.
The house was a double house; and for a few years Billy Jacobs's twin
brother, a sea captain, had lived in the other half of it. But Mrs. Billy