it before the eyes of one who had never seen it. "'Tis a pleasant old
house, just about twice as old as I am, four miles from Boston, in
what was once the country and is now a populous suburb. But it still
has some ten acres of open about it, and some fine old trees. When the
worst comes to the worst (if I live so long) I shall still have four
and a half acres left with the house, the rest belonging to my
brothers and sisters or their heirs. It is a square house, with four
rooms on a floor, like some houses of the Georgian era I have seen in
English provincial towns, only they are of brick, and this is of wood.
But it is solid with its heavy oaken beams, the spaces between which
in the four outer walls are filled in with brick, though you mustn't
fancy a brick-and-timber house, for outwardly it is sheathed with
wood. Inside there is much wainscot (of deal) painted white in the
fashion of the time when it was built. It is very sunny, the sun
rising so as to shine (at an acute angle to be sure) through the
northern windows, and going round the other three sides in the course
of the day. There is a pretty staircase with the quaint old twisted
banisters,--which they call balusters now; but mine are banisters. My
library occupies two rooms opening into each other by arches at the
sides of the ample chimneys. The trees I look out on are the earliest
things I remember. There you have me in my new-old quarters. But you
must not fancy a large house--rooms sixteen feet square, and on the
ground floor, nine high. It was large, as things went here, when it
was built, and has a certain air of amplitude about it as from some
inward sense of dignity." In an earlier letter he wrote: "Here I am in
my garret. I slept here when I was a little curly-headed boy, and used
to see visions between me and the ceiling, and dream the so often
recurring dream of having the earth put into my hand like an orange.
In it I used to be shut up without a lamp,--my mother saying that none
of her children should be afraid of the dark,--to hide my head under