94 AN AMERICAN FARMER IN ENGLAND. 



buxom serving-maid) goes to call the mistress. The parlour 

 is a small room neatly furnished, but not as expensively as it 

 would be in most substantial farmers houses with us ; painted 

 deal chairs, a painted-calico-covered lounge, the floor carpeted, 

 and the walls papered ; an oak writing-desk, a table, and a 

 sewing-stand ; no newspapers or books, but a family-bible on 

 the mantel and an almanac on the desk : a door and a window 

 open from it upon the flower-garden. 



In a few minutes the mistress enters, and, after kindly 

 receiving us, rings a bell, and, when the maid comes, gives 

 her a key and tells her to bring cider. After short refresh 

 ment, she takes us into the garden. A pleasant garden, with 

 some very large and fine pansies, some roses, and great pro 

 mise of more. It is extremely neat, clean, and finely kept, 

 and it is the pride of the mistress that she takes the entire 

 care of it herself; as we walk, she has her scissors in her hand, 

 and cuts flowers, and when we are seated in a curious little 

 arbour of clipped yew, where she had left her &quot; work&quot; when 

 she came in to see us, she arranges little nosegays and pre 

 sents them to us. 



The house is small in size ; the walls are of plain red 

 brick ; the roof of slate, neither very steep-pitched nor flat ; 

 the chimneys and windows of the usual simple American 

 country-house form and size. There is no porch, veranda, 

 gable, or dor mar, upon the garden side, yet the house has a 

 very pleasing and tasteful aspect, and does not at all disfigure 

 the lovely landscape of distant woody hills, against which we 

 see it. Five shillings worth of materials from a nursery, half- 

 a-day s labour of a man, and some recreative work of our fair 

 and healthy hostess own hands, have done it vastly better than 

 a carpenter or mason could at a thousand times the cost. 

 Three large evergreen trees have grown near the end of the 

 house, so that, instead of the plain, straight, ugly red corner, 



