33^ 



THE GUIDE TO NATURE 



eyes and sees again in memory the 

 vision of her girlhood, when she 

 played at keeping house, with callers 

 to stay to tea and make merry under 

 the apple tree by the wall. To her it 

 is again the old farm, the old mother, 

 and the cows with bells on their neck 

 clanging homeward from the pasture 

 in the cool of the early evening. 



Some of us who see these things, see 

 them best with closed eyes, and we 

 hear the heavenly old sounds as tiiey 

 come faintly from across the valley, 

 sounds and songs half a century old. 

 Hear them ? We could hear them if we 

 were deaf as the Biblical adder. But 



by artistic feeling and dainty apprecia- 

 tion of nature. Mr. Arthur W. Francis 

 and his wife possess these necessary 

 requisites because their interest in the 

 old farm has not been due to a spirit 

 of commercialism. Mr. Francis has 

 touched where touching was needed 

 and left untouched where nature could 

 be left and trusted. The result is that 

 art and nature have gone hand in hand 

 close and sympathetic comradeship. 



Could anything be more delightful to 

 the eye than the rustic bridge erected 

 with an air of security, not with a con- 

 spicuous display of hewn stone and 

 cement, but with boulders and "cob- 



• WHICHEVER WAY ONE MAY POINT, 'TIS BEAUTY', BEAUTY, EVERYWHERE." 



it needs not the memory of personal 

 experiences as one approaches Brook 

 Hollow Farm, sheltered so snugly and 

 cozily in a sunny valley that might be 

 a valley of enchantment. Here mingle 

 together the poetry of the past and the 

 improvements of the present. For this 

 reason we bring to the reader's atten- 

 tion this month one of the most skill- 

 fully and successfully improved old 

 farms that we have ever seen. The 

 hand of improvement has been guided 



bles" thrown together in delightful 

 abandon, in delicious profusion of reck- 

 lessly beautiful lack of order? This is 

 skill, and all the greater skill because 

 it is skill concealed, with no visible 

 effort to attain concealment. It is the 

 wild, rustic, ever flowing brook with a 

 convenient bridge above it and in har- 

 mony and sympathy with it. The 

 homestead in its primitive beauty 

 glistens across the vista of stone walls, 

 as I look at it from the road, snug, 



