36 MY FARM. 



time had crept far out upon the margin of the plain, 

 It seems to me that I can recall the note of an oriole, 

 that sang gushingly from the limbs of an overreach 

 ing elm as we passed. I know I remember the stately 

 broad road we took, and its smooth, firm macadam. 

 I have a fancy that I compared it in my own mind, 

 and not unfavorably, with the metal of a road, which 

 I had driven over only two months before in the en 

 virons of Liverpool. I remember a somewhat stately 

 country house that we passed, whose architecture 

 dissolved any illusions I might have been under, in 

 regard to my whereabouts. I remember turning 

 slightly, perhaps to the right, and threading the ways 

 of a neat little manufacturing village, catching 

 views of waterfalls, of tall chimneys, of open pasture 

 grounds ; and remember bridges, and other bridges, 

 and how the village straggled on with its neat white 

 palings, and whiter houses, with honeysuckles at the 

 doors ; and how we skirted a pond, where the pads 

 of lilies lay all idly afloat ; and how a great hulk of 

 rock loomed up suddenly near a thousand feet, with 

 dwarfed cedars and oaks tufting its crevices tufting 

 its top, and how we drove almost beneath it, so that 

 I seemed to be in Meyringen again, and to hear the 

 dash of the foaming Reichenbach ; and how we as 

 cended again, drifting through another limb of the 

 village, where the little churches stood; and how we 



