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We have made neither formal gardens nor water gardens nor rose arches; we have not built marble swimming-tanks, nor even cement ones; we have not naturalized forget-me-nots in the brook

very old or very unprogressive. While we are waiting to grow

of the dim old attic, while all day long about their pale lavender sprays the great yellow and black butterflies hang flutteringly. Best of all is the orchard; the old apple trees blossom prodigally for a brief season in May, blossom in rosy-white, in cream-white, in pure white, in green-white, transforming the lane and the hill-slopes into a bower, smothering the old house in beauty, brooding over it, on still moonlight nights, in pale clouds of sweetness. And then comes a wind, with a

loped with her sixteen-year-old lover; there is the story of the cellar nail, a shuddery one, handed down from a yet more remote antiquity; there are tales of the "ballroom" on the second flo

ship weighted with barnacles, moves more and more slowly; the past appears more real than the present. To the old this seems natural and right, to others it is often depressing; but Jonathan and I

radicable desire and hope of improvement, which, though it does not blossom rankly in pergolas and tea-houses, is none the less there,

nutritious roasters, with ambrosial chicken-pasties, I am not unappreciative; but I realize that all these things might be had from my neighbors' barnyards. What I primarily value my own hens for is their companionship. Talk about the companionship of dogs and cats! Cats walk about my home, sleek and

o sit on a big rock in the barnyard and watch the hens walking about. Their very gait pleases me-the way they bob their heads, the "genteel" way they have of picking up their feet, for all the world as though they cared where they stepped; the absent and superior manner in which they "scratch for worms," their gaze fixed on the sky, then cock their heads downwards with an indifferent air, absently pick up a chip, drop it, and walk on! Did any one

ntly pulls the tail of each candidate in turn, and by the dim light of the lantern carefully observes the nature of their reaction, choosing for destruction the one whose deportment seems to him most foolish. In this way, by weeding out the extremely silly, he hopes in time to raise the general intellectual standard o

eat fireplace daily, while Jonathan comforted me by suggesting that the birds took the place of chimney-sweeps, and that soot was good for rose bushes. Yes, if the little things had been willing to stick to their chimney, I should have been tolerant, if not cordial. But when they invaded my domain, I felt that I had a grievance. And invade it they did. At dawn I was rudely awakened by a rush from the fireplace, a mad scuttering about the dusky room, a desperate exit by the little open window, where the raised shade revealed the pale light of morning. At night, if I went with my candle into a dark room, I was met by a whirling thing, dashing itself against me, against the light, against the walls, in a moth-like ecstasy of self-destruction. In

ubsided behind the fresh pillows of the bed. Jonathan sprang up. "Wait! I'll get it!" He carefully drew away the pillow, his hand was almost on the poor little quivering wretch, when it made another rush, hurled itself against the mirror, upset a vase full of columbines, and finally sank behind the wood-box. At last it was caught, and Jonathan, going

esides, I don't wish them trained, I wish them kept out. I don't regard them

se without chimney swallows!" he

uld i

ey the swallows still build, but the young ones now drop on the nettings instead of in the embers, and lie there cheeping shrilly until somehow their parents or friends convey them up again where they belong. And I no longer spend

wallows trained. There is, I am sure, matter enough in other parts of the farm upon which one may wreak on