stairway, the heavy, old-fashioned splendors of the house chilled me. How
could I occupy myself happily through the coming years in this great,
gloomy house? I vaguely wondered, while life stretched out before my
imagination, in long and tiresome perspective.

With no school duties to occupy my time, my knowledge of amusements,
needlework, or any other of the softer feminine accomplishments,
exceedingly limited, I was suddenly confronted with the problem how I was
to fill up the days and years with any degree of satisfaction. Hitherto
every thought had been strained eagerly towards this home coming. After
that fancy was a blank. Now I had got here, what then? I had been a
fairly industrious pupil and graduated with commendable success; but it
had been a tradition at our school that once away from its confinement,
text-books and the weariness of study were at an end. I went out on the
lawn, and was standing, a trifle homesick for the companionship of the
merry crowd of schoolmates, when a side glance revealed to me an immense
garden, such as I had often seen, but not near enough to sufficiently
enjoy. I soon forgot my lonely fancies as I strayed admiringly through
the well kept walks, amid beds of old-fashioned sweet smelling flowers,
which now-a-days are for the most part relegated to the humble cottages;
but farther on I discovered the rarer plants of many climes, some of them
old acquaintances, but others utter strangers, only so far as I could
remember some of them from my lessons in botany. Still stretching beyond
on the hill side I saw the vegetable and fruit gardens. Huge strawberry
beds attracted me, the ripe fruit I found tempting; but feeling still a
stranger, the old weakness that comes down to us from Mother Eve to reach
forth and pluck, was restrained. "What a perfect Eden it is!" I could not
help exclaiming, though no ears save the birds, and multitudinous insects
existences, were within reach of my voice, and probably for the latter,
any sound I could make would be as unheard by them as the music of the