THE STABLES. 95 



you see a beautiful, irregular, natural, tufty tower of verdure ; 

 myrtle and jessamine clamber gracefully upon a slight trellis 

 of laths over the door ; roses are trained up about one of the 

 lower windows, honeysuckle about another, while all the 

 others, above and below, are deeply draped and festooned with 

 the ivy, which, starting from a few slips thrust one day into the 

 soil by the mistress, near the corner opposite the evergreens, 

 has already covered two-thirds of the bare brick wall on this 

 side, found its way over the top of the tall yew-hedge, round 

 the corner, climbed the gable-end, and is now creeping along 

 the ridge-pole and up the kitchen chimney which, before 

 speaking only of boiled bacon and potatoes, now suggests happy 

 holly-hangings of the fireside and grateful harvest s home, 

 hides all the formal lines and angles, breaks all the stiff rules 

 of art, dances lightly over the grave precision of human 

 handiwork, softens, shades, and shelters all under a gorgeous 

 vesture of Heaven s own weaving. 



Soon, while we are sitting in this leafy boudoir, comes the 

 master, as good a specimen of the stout, hearty, old English 

 farmer as we shall find, and we go the lady and all 

 to look at the horses, cows, and pigs. The stables are mostly 

 small, inconveniently separated, and badly fitted up, and 

 there is but little in them to boast of in the way of cattle ; 

 but there is one new building, incongruously neat among the 

 rest, and in this there are some roomy stalls, with iron man 

 gers, sliding neck-chains, and asphalte floor with grates and 

 drain. Here was the best stock of the farm : among the 

 rest, a fine, fat Hereford cow, which had just been sold to the 

 butcher for $60, and a handsome heifer of the same blood, 

 heavy with calf, which had been lately bought for $15, the 

 farmer chuckling as he passes his hand over her square rump, 

 as if it had been a shrewd purchase. He valued his best 

 dairy cow at $45. 



