A COUNTRY HOME


How much it means--what possibilities it suggests! The one I shall
describe was built not far from half a century ago, and the lapsing years
have only made it more homelike. It has long ceased to be a new object--
an innovation--and has become a part of the landscape, like the trees
that have grown up around it. Originally painted brown, with the flight
of time it has taken a grayish tinge, as if in sympathy with its venerable
proprietor. It stands back from the roadway, and in summer has an air of
modest seclusion. Elms, maples, and shrubbery give to the passer-by but
chance glimpses of the wide veranda, which is indicated, rather than
revealed, beyond the thickly clustering vines.

It is now late December, and in contrast with its leafy retirement the
old homestead stands out with a sharp distinctness in the white landscape;
and yet its sober hue harmonizes with the dark boles of the trees, and
suggests that, like them, it is a natural growth of the soil, and quite
as capable of clothing itself with foliage in the coming spring. This in
a sense will be true when the greenery and blossoms of the wistaria,
honeysuckle, and grape-vines appear, for their fibres and tendrils have
clung to the old house so long that they may well be deemed an inseparable
part of it. Even now it seems that the warmth, light, and comfort within
are the sustaining influences which will carry them through, the coming
days of frost and storm. A tall pine-tree towers above the northern gable
of the dwelling, and it is ever sighing and moaning to itself, as if it
possessed some unhappy family secret which it can neither reveal nor
forget. On the hither side of its shade a carriage-drive curves toward an
ancient horse-block, with many a lichen growing on the under side of the
weather-beaten planks and supports. From this platform, where guests have