My abode is on a broad, sunny street, with a few great elms
overhead, and with large old houses and grass-banks opposite.
There is so little snow that the outlook in the depth of winter
is often merely that of a paler and leafless summer, and a soft,
springlike sky almost always spreads above. Past the window
streams an endless sunny panorama (for the house fronts the chief
thoroughfare between country and town),--relics of summer
equipages in faded grandeur; great, fragrant hay-carts; vast
moving mounds of golden straw; loads of crimson onions; heaps of
pale green cabbages; piles of gray tree-prunings, looking as if
the patrician trees were sending their superfluous wealth of
branches to enrich the impoverished orchards of the Poor Farm;
wagons of sea-weed just from the beach, with bright, moist hues,
and dripping with sea-water and sea-memories, each weed an
argosy, bearing its own wild histories. At this season, the very
houses move, and roll slowly by, looking round for more lucrative
quarters next season. Never have I seen real estate made so
transportable as in Oldport. The purchaser, after finishing and
furnishing to his fancy, puts his name on the door, and on the
fence a large white placard inscribed "For sale". Then his
household arrangements are complete, and he can sit down to enjoy
himself.

By a side-glance from our window, one may look down an ancient
street, which in some early epoch of the world's freshness
received the name of Spring Street. A certain lively lady,
addicted to daring Scriptural interpretations, thinks that there
is some mistake in the current versions of Genesis, and that it
was Spring Street which was created in the beginning, and the