entirely in the open air, save when the weather forbade; to be amused
with all rural occupations; and especially to frequent farm-yards, for
the purpose of inhaling the breath of cows. My father exchanged
parochial duty with a friend, taking his village congregation, and
engaging a house very near the church.

That tall white house, what a place it holds in my fond recollection. It
was perfectly an old parsonage, and behind it lay a garden larger than
our city orchard, sloping gently down, with a profusion of fruit and
flowers, bounded by high walls, and the central walk terminating in a
door, beyond which lay the scene of our greatest enjoyment. A narrow
slip of grass, fringed with osiers and alders and willows, alone
separated the wall from a very clear, lovely stream, which winding half
round an extensive common, turned a mill. This small river abounded with
fish, and we soon became expert anglers; besides which, on creeping to
some distance by a path of our own discovery, we could cross the stream
on a movable plank, and take a wide range through, the country. This
removal was a double resource: it invigorated my bodily frame, until I
outgrew and out-bloomed every girl of my age in the neighborhood, while
really laying a foundation for many years of uninterrupted health, and a
constitution to defy the change of climate for which I was destined;
while it won me from the sickening, enervating habit of sedentary
enjoyment over the pages of a book, which, added to the necessary
studies and occupations, was relaxing alike the tone of the bodily and
mental frame. From the polluted works of man, I was drawn to the
glorious works of God; and never did bird of the air or beast of the
field more luxuriate in the pure bright elements of nature than I did.
All the poetical visions of liberty that had floated in my brain seemed
now realized; all pastoral descriptions faded before the actual
enjoyment of rural life. Sometimes wreathing garlands of, wild flowers,