fisherman, out from the dusty town for a day of recreation, is
often wont to seek its hospitality. The house in style of
architecture is something of a departure from the typical
farmhouse, being designed and fashioned with no regard to symmetry
or proportion, but rather, as is suggested, built to conform to
the matter-of-fact and most sensible ideas of its owner, who, if
it pleased him, would have small windows where large ones ought to
be, and vice versa, whether they balanced properly to the eye or
not. And chimneys--he would have as many as he wanted, and no two
alike, in either height or size. And if he wanted the front of the
house turned from all possible view, as though abashed at any
chance of public scrutiny, why, that was his affair and not the
public's; and, with like perverseness, if he chose to thrust his
kitchen under the public's very nose, what should the generally
fagged-out, half-famished representative of that dignified public
do but reel in his dead minnow, shoulder his fishing-rod, clamber
over the back fence of the old farmhouse and inquire within, or
jog back to the city, inwardly anathematizing that very particular
locality or the whole rural district in general. That is just the
way that farmhouse looked to the writer of this sketch one week
ago--so individual it seemed--so liberal, and yet so independent.
It wasn't even weather-boarded, but, instead, was covered smoothly
with some cement, as though the plasterers had come while the
folks were visiting, and so, unable to get at the interior, had
just plastered the outside.

I am more than glad that I was hungry enough, and weary enough,
and wise enough to take the house at its first suggestion; for,
putting away my fishing-tackle for the morning, at least, I went
up the sloping bank, crossed the dusty road, and confidently