CHAPTER II.


_WHAT SHE THINKS OF IT_.

Springdale was one of those beautiful rural towns whose flourishing
aspect is a striking exponent of the peculiarities of New-England
life. The ride through it presents a refreshing picture of wide, cool,
grassy streets, overhung with green arches of elm, with rows of large,
handsome houses on either side, each standing back from the street
in its own retired square of gardens, green turf, shady trees, and
flowering shrubs. It was, so to speak, a little city of country-seats.
It spoke of wealth, thrift, leisure, cultivation, quiet, thoughtful
habits, and moral tastes.

Some of these mansions were of ancestral reputation, and had been in
the family whose name they bore for generations back; a circumstance
sometimes occurring even in New-England towns where neither law nor
custom unites to perpetuate property in certain family lines.

The Seymour house was a well-known, respected mansion for generations
back. Old Judge Seymour, the grandfather, was the lineal descendant of
Parson Seymour; the pastor who first came with the little colony of
Springdale, when it was founded as a church in the wilderness, amid
all the dangers of wild beasts and Indians.