quietest place imaginable, there being a police station at the entrance,
and the officer on duty allows no ragged or ill-looking person to pass.
There being a toll, it precludes all unnecessary passage of carriages;
and never were there more noiseless streets than those that give access
to these pretty residences. On either side there is thick shrubbery,
with glimpses through it of the ornamented portals, or into the trim
gardens with smooth-shaven lawns, of no large extent, but still affording
reasonable breathing-space. They are really an improvement on anything,
save what the very rich can enjoy, in America. The former occupants of
our house (Mrs. Campbell and family) having been fond of flowers, there
are many rare varieties in the garden, and we are told that there is
scarcely a month in the year when a flower will not be found there.

The house is respectably, though not very elegantly, furnished. It was a
dismal, rainy day yesterday, and we had a coal-fire in the sitting-room,
beside which I sat last evening as twilight came on, and thought, rather
sadly, how many times we have changed our home since we were married. In
the first place, our three years at the Old Manse; then a brief residence
at Salem, then at Boston, then two or three years at Salem again; then at
Lenox, then at West Newton, and then again at Concord, where we imagined
that we were fixed for life, but spent only a year. Then this farther
flight to England, where we expect to spend four years, and afterwards
another year or two in Italy, during all which time we shall have no real
home. For, as I sat in this English house, with the chill, rainy English
twilight brooding over the lawn, and a coal-fire to keep me comfortable
on the first evening of September, and the picture of a stranger--the
dead husband of Mrs. Campbell--gazing down at me from above the
mantel-piece,--I felt that I never should be quite at home here.
Nevertheless, the fire was very comfortable to look at, and the shape of
the fireplace--an arch, with a deep cavity--was an improvement on the