There nearly all that has brought joy and peace and contentment into our
lives was born to us. It was from there I began to progress; it was
there my publishers found me; and it was there little Bud was born to
us. We are out of it now. We left it for a big reason; but we drive by
it often just to see it; for it is still ours in the precious memory of
the years we spent within its walls.

Still, in the beginning, it was just a house! It had no associations and
no history. It had been built to sell. The people who paid for its
construction saw in its growing walls and rooftree only the few hundred
dollars they hoped to gain. It was left to us to change that _house_
into a _home. It sounds preachy, I know, to say that all buildings
depend for their real beauty upon the spirit of the people who inhabit
them. But it is true.

As the weeks and months slipped by, the new house began to soften and
mellow under Mother's gentle touches. The living-room assumed an air of
comfort; my books now had a real corner of their own; the
guest-chamber--or, rather, the little spare-room--already had
entertained its transient tenants; and as our friends came and went the
walls caught something from them all, to remind us of their presence.

I took to gardening. The grounds were small, but they were large enough
to teach me the joy of an intimate friendship with growing things.
To-day, in my somewhat larger garden, I have more than one hundred and
fifty rosebushes, and twenty or thirty peony clumps, and I know their
names and their habits. The garden has become a part of the home. It is
not yet the garden I dream of, nor even the garden which I think it will
be next year; but it is the place where play divides the ground with