I 



IN the very heart of old New Old houses 

 England towns there may often 

 be seen some dilapidated house 

 falling into ruins, surrounded 

 by half -dead fruit-trees and straggling 

 shrubs, while an adjacent garden, once 

 productive and blooming, runs to waste 

 beside it. Its gates are off the hinges, 

 the fences falling to pieces, the hedges 

 untrimmed, the flower-beds smothered in 

 weeds; coarse burdocks and rampant wild 

 vines encumber the ground and run over 

 into the highway, the trim paths have 

 disappeared, the out-houses are toppling 

 over : forlornness and abandonment speak 

 in every line of the decaying house, the 

 former gentility of which renders its de- 

 cline still more melancholy. 



It was such a dreary old place as this 

 that attracted our attention when we first 

 came to settle in Massachusetts. Why 

 3 



