This being a matter of vital moment, we went into a joint calculation (always upon paper) which proved triumphantly to our pleasurable surprise, that when our farm of twelve acres should furnish, as it must, in time, all the vegetables, poultry, pork, lard, hams, milk, butter, eggs, fruit, cornmeal, buckwheat, and wheat flour we required for our table, we could live during the summer in a lordly independence of the butcher, baker, and grocer seldom equalled by comfort-loving civilized beings, perhaps never surpassed except by Selkirk in his solitary sovereignty. In fact, it was evident that -unless figures lie, which they never do, (upon paper) we would not only curtail our present expenses materially by the proposed plan, but actually make money enough while in the country to give us a comfortable lift into our town winter. Why, with the insignificant exceptions of, say, a pound or two of tea-for although we asked no better beverage, morning, noon, and night than pure, real milk, our Milesian handmaidens must be pampered by means of the Chinese weed,-eight or ten pounds of sugar to sprinkle over the berries and peaches which, with cream, were to form our desserts, to the utter exclusion of pies, cakes, and puddings-and a few candles now and then-people retired early in the country--and oh! soap and starch and salad-oil, pepper, salt, and vinegar, there would be literally nothing to buy during the four or five months we hoped to spend annually in this paradise. In our paper barque we accordingly set sail upon the troubled sea of building enterprise. Within three days after our conference upon the knoll, our plan was in the hands of a practical architect carpenters having gone out of fashion and after no more than the usual delays consequent upon trying to convince a succession of practical architects, each intelligent and a master of his craft, that we knew what suited our needs and our means almost as well as they did, we accepted a specification, and work was commenced upon other material than the frail one which had thus far answered our turn so satisfactorily.

Time, and the printer's patience, would fail me were I to attempt to narrate the divers misadventures that marred the perfect bliss we had hoped to enjoy in watching the progress of our "lodge in the wilderness." I don't quote the rest of poor Cowper's aspiration, believing, as I do, that his mental and physical maladies would have been terribly augmented by the "boundless contiguity of shade" he coveted. We took care that the sunshine and air should freely visit every part of our country-box. I forbear to tax the reader's indulgence, or excite his mirth by describing how, having purchased the quanity of boards, shingles, and bricks demanded by the masterbuilder, we were notified, when we were expecting every day to hear that the house was covered in, that owing to some inexplicable blunder of the infallible figures, everything was at a stand-still except the laborers' wages, until a second supply of bricks, shingles, and boards, equal to the former, could be sent up from the city. How the stated complement of lime and paint, in like manner and in due season, required to be duplicated, and how, when the cap-brick was laid, there remained unused but one of its fellows and three shingles to testify, in mute impressiveness to the vanity and humiliating uncertainty of mortal calculations--upon paper. How our well filled up with sand, and had to be deepened as well as cleaned, although we were at that very time paying a teamster a ruinous price to haul sand for mortar from a siliceous bank, three miles offan unavoidable expense that wofully bewildered my weak mind, when I saw him "dump" his load within three feet of the heap thrown up by the well-diggers-my optics failing to descry any difference in the quality of the two mounds except that one was wet and the other dry. And even this dissimilarity vanished when another paid laborer drew pailful after pailful of water from the well and saturated the mason's raw material. How a pitched battle of opinion between us and the masons respecting the drainage of our cellar had an ignominious result

in our retreat from the field of debate, and a disastrous one in the later condition of said vault, which, while it did not, as was currently affirmed by our neighbors, contain, in the driest, season, six feet of water in the shallowest part, did, after abundant and continuous rains, show symptoms of unwelcome humidity in the form of a profuse cold sweat bedewing the wall next the hill, and how the expensive conclusion of the affair was our adoption, after a year's delay, of the precautionary measures we had originally proposed. How, in the absence of the only person who knew what were our wishes on the subject, the barn was painted one color and the house another, neither of them the hue directed by us; how, when this mistake was rectified and a pleasing wood-tint effaced all sign and memory of it, the ambitious colorist's genius broke out anew in vivid crimson upon chimneys and brick foundation, and flamed in the glare of a July sun and the sight of all passers-by, until the Dominie's next supervisional visit. How the blinds we had ordered of a peculiarly fine and rich shade of brown-something between café au lait and russet, to harmonize with the prevailing hue of the buildings, were sent up per carriage, at our expense, from the town-manufactory, and proved to be of a viciously bright green. How, after innumerable postponements, we effected a coup d'état, and moved in, baggage, babies, and Biddies, before the walls were pronounced by workmen and super-sympathetic friends wholesomely dry, and how the last coat of paint was applied to the porches, and the last workman dismissed on the sorrowful October day when we locked up the main building and turned our backs upon the retreat-dear even then-now trebly beloved, to which, in tender recollectionof homestead far away, and because, view it from what point you may, it is always the spot in the landscape on which the sunlight sleeps most constantly and brightly, we had named "Sunnybank."

Yes! our dream of that fragrant June morning had taken visible, and not

an uncomely form, and although it had cost us twice the time and anxiety, and three times the money we had then expected-thanks to paper and the infamous delusions of figures—to devote to it, we regretted none of these. It was our own bantling, and as we walked about it, if there were no pinnacles and bulwarks to mark, we gloried in the thought that the frame of heart-oak had been taken from our woods, as were also the fences that girdled the premises; that the stonelining of cellar and well was blasted from our hill-side; and the shade and fruit-trees we had planted were striking their roots into our soil. The thrill of proprietorship kept our blood in healthful motion; the planning and workingour very annoyances and failures drew off our thoughts into other channels than the hot, turbid rush of a life, of whose perils and distresses the ghoul resident in our door-bell clanged forth doleful signal. I have said that our house of refuge is not uncomely, but neither is it pretentious. There is little to distinguish it from the plainest farm-house in the neighborhood beyond the broad piazzas, which are our summer sitting-room, and the situation, so much nearer the lakelet than the road, the back being turned in bold disrespect upon the latter and the full front upon the former. There are windows wherever they could be set, without violence to the rules laid down by our series of practical architects, and all those in the lower story open to the floor. In further pursuance of the idea of general coolness during the summer months, there are mattings throughout the house, save in the hall and dining-room, the flooring of which is laid in alternate strips of walnut and chestnut. The appointments of the interior are of the simplest description, but on damp or cool evenings, parlor and chambers boast of one handsome piece of furniture, for which a rich citizen might sigh in vain-namely, a crackling wood-fire, built upon oldfashioned andirons (the enterprising hardware merchant to whom we applied for them was not acquainted with the article. Was it a new patent?) tinging the walls

with saffron and rose, sending long lines of laughing light through the lakeward windows, which we always leave unshuttered until bed-time; making redder ruddy cheeks and brighter sparkling eyes, while the little ones frolic in its gleams, and the babyest of all sits upon Mamma's knee, curling her pink toes in the genial heat, and staring delightedly at the scarlet wonder.

When they are "folded like the flocks," Papa and Mamma, repudiating all suggestions of lamp or candle, sit side by side in the mellow radiance of the consuming back-log and talk in blissful fearlessness of interruption.

"You must find it awful lonesome here, 'specially of nights," said a pitying neighbor. "I wonder you didn't build right onto the road. It would be kinder lively to see wagons and the like go by. But for the out-of-the-way situation it would be a pretty nice place for a fancy one."

46

"My dear sir," returned the Dominie, with a reminiscent shudder at the doorbell, we came here to avoid being lively." We talk then, with no thought of loneliness-somewhat of the Past, much of the restful, yet not indolent Presentmore of the Future.

"What a golden opportunity for study is your seclusion!" wrote a friend.

To him our discourse would seem unintellectual-worse than frivolous, our topics being literally" of the earth, earthy," ranging as they do from esculents to shrubbery; from pigs to poultry, with occasional discussion of the ways and means by which a certain adjacent meadow-lot our covetous eyes devour, as did Ahab Naboth's vineyard, may be purchased, and how much hay could be cut from the same every season, to computations touching cows and pasture, and solemn speculations on many points, concerning which any practical farmer could give us information. If we prefer learning for ourselves on these and other subjects, and choose to spend our money for that invaluable thing-experience--whose business is it? If people laugh behind our backs at our "odd taste," what care we, so long as the exercise of that taste brings

in a rich revenue of health and happiness?

Professor Solon, our very good friend, never violated the proprieties or was accused of eccentricity in his life, so he did as the doctors ordered when they recommended a season at Saratoga, a year ago, and enjoyed four weeks of exquisite misery in that fashionable retreat, sleeping, when he could no longer be kept awake by the execrable din raging in the corridors and ball-room of the" best" family hotel in the town-in the topmost sky-parlor of this great public convenience, going tridaily through the horrors of the Inquisitorial water-question in the obstinate endeavor to pour into the already abused stomach more liquid by half than it was meant to hold, never reflecting with all his learning, that he was outraging natural laws by the futile attempt to make a camel of himself in the stupid notion that the nauseous fluid, thus bloatingly imbibed, would last him through the desert-journey of the next college term. Next summer, he is to try Newport, secretly considering, I doubt not-poor victim! that water which holds in solution but one salt, must be more palatable than that containing several.

Our well-beloved Dr. Melancthon preached last Sabbath the third farewell sermon he has had occasion to deliver during a pastorate of twelve years in our city, prior to embarking upon a sea-voyage. He must take a long one this time, for he is further gone in a decline than when he tried the vaunted remedy in '60, and again in '65. It is a costly experiment, and a distressing, since he must leave his family behind. His wife is almost as delicate as himself, and while she cannot be spared from her six little ones for more than a week or two, the congregation are making up a purse to send her to Springs-or somewhere," as one of them lucidly expressed it to me, the other day.

"the

We speak of the two thus sadly severed and of the helpless brood threatened with orphanage, pityingly and affectionately, and our hearts warm yearningly over the darlings, brown of skin and sturdy of limb, who are sleeping soundly in the