oldest part was of stone, with loop-holes for musketry, having served as a
family fortress in the time of the Indians. To this there had been made
various additions, some of brick, some of wood, according to the exigencies
of the moment; so that it was full of nooks and crooks, and chambers of all
sorts and sizes. It was buried among willows, elms, and cherry trees, and
surrounded with roses and hollyhocks, with honeysuckle and sweetbrier
clambering about every window. A brood of hereditary pigeons sunned
themselves upon the roof; hereditary swallows and martins built about the
eaves and chimneys; and hereditary bees hummed about the flower-beds.

Under the influence of our story-books every object around us now assumed a
new character, and a charmed interest. The wild flowers were no longer the
mere ornaments of the fields, or the resorts of the toilful bee; they were
the lurking-places of fairies. We would watch the humming-bird, as it
hovered around the trumpet creeper at our porch, and the butterfly as it
flitted up into the blue air, above the sunny tree-tops, and fancy them
some of the tiny beings from fairyland. I would call to mind all that I had
read of Robin Goodfellow and his power of transformation. Oh, how I envied
him that power! How I longed to be able to compress my form into utter
littleness; to ride the bold dragonfly; swing on the tall bearded grass;
follow the ant into his subterraneous habitation, or dive into the
cavernous depths of the honeysuckle!

While I was yet a mere child I was sent to a daily school, about two miles
distant. The schoolhouse was on the edge of a wood, close by a brook
overhung with birches, alders, and dwarf willows. We of the school who
lived at some distance came with our dinners put up in little baskets. In
the intervals of school hours we would gather round a spring, under a tuft
of hazel-bushes, and have a kind of picnic; interchanging the rustic
dainties with which our provident mothers had fitted us out. Then, when our