It seems but yesterday, although more than a half century ago, that I,
a puny boy, stood on the hilltop and looked for the first time upon
this, the earliest home of which I have any vivid recollection. It
was a fair scene of rustic tranquillity, where a contented mind might
delight to spend a lifetime mid hum of bees and low of kine.

Along the eastern horizon's rim loomed the blue sea beyond the sandy
dunes of old Plum Island; the lazy river born in babbling brooks and
bubbling springs flowing languidly mid wooded islands, and picturesque
stacks of salt hay, representing the arduous toil of farmers and
dry-as-dust fodder for reluctant cows. Nearer, the two church spires
of the little village, striving to lift the sordid minds of the
natives from earthly clods to the clouds, and where beckoning hands
strove vainly to inspire them with heavenly hopes; around them,
glistening in the sunlight, the marble slabs where sleep the rude
forefathers of the hamlet, some mute inglorious Miltons who came from
England in the early sixties, whose tombstones are pierced by rifle
bullets fired at the maraudering red skins. These are the cities of
the dead, far more populous than the town of the living.

Nearer, the willowy brook that turns the mill; to the south the dense
pine woods, peopled in our imaginations, with fairy elves, owls, and
hobgoblins--now, alas, owing to the rapacity of the sawmills, naught
but a howling wilderness of stumps and underbrush.

Directly below me, stands our half-century old house with its eaves
sloping to the ground, down which generations of boys had ruined their
pants in hilarious coasting; near by, the ancient well-swipe, and the
old oaken bucket which rose from the well; beyond this, of course,
as usual, the piggery and hennery to contaminate the water and breed