pasture, betokening a warm, fair day. As I opened the heavy front door
of Mr. Wetherell's old gambrel-roofed house, and stepped out onto the
large flat stone at the door-sill, every blade of grass was glistening
with dew-drops; such a sweetness pervaded the air as one only realizes
when the dew is on the grass and bushes. At my right, close to the
door-stone, a large bush of southern-wood, or man's-first-love, was
growing; just beyond it and under the "middle-room" windows two large,
white-rose bushes were bending beneath the weight of a multitude of
roses and buds. A large yellow-rose bush claimed the left, and spread
itself over the ground. Single red roses were standing guard at the
corner of the house. A rod or more below the front door the garden fence
stood and looked as if it had been standing for many a year. It was made
of palings, pointed; I should think it was five feet high. The posts had
begun to lean into the garden and the palings were covered with a short
green moss, which seemed soft and growing in the dew. The old gate swung
itself to after me with a bang, and I noticed that a string with a brick
fastened to it and tied to the gate at one end, and twisted around a
stake driven into the ground a few feet from the gate, was the cause of
its closing so quickly. Red-cherry trees loaded with small green
cherries were growing on one side of the garden; purple-plum trees
skirted the other side; and I knew full well how two months later those
creased, mouldy-looking plums would be found hiding in the short, green
grass beneath the trees.

Peach-trees were leaning over the fence in the southeast corner; a long
row of red-currant bushes ran through the middle of the garden; English
gooseberry bushes threw out their prickly branches laden with round,
woolly fruit at the north end. Rows of hyssop, rue, saffron, and sage,
and beds of lettuce, pepper-grass, and cives, all had their place in
this old-fashioned garden. In the southwest corner an immense