100 AN AMERICAN FARMER IN ENGLAND. 



I dressed, and worked my way through the dark, crooked 

 stairs to the kitchen, where, on the bright steel fender, I 

 found ray shoes dry and polished. I walked through the 

 single short street of the hamlet. The houses were set closely 

 together, with neat little gardens about them. They were of 

 every age ; one I noticed marked with the date 1630 about 

 the time of the first settlement in Connecticut. It was of 

 stone, narrow, with a steep roof covered with very small 

 slates ; the windows much wider than high, and filled with 

 little panes of glass set in strips of lead. Except in this and 

 the materials of which it was built, it was not unlike some of 

 the oldest houses that we yet see in our first Puritan villages, 

 as Hadley and Wethersfield. 



A blackbird hopped before me, but did not whistle, and 

 plenty of little birds were chirping on the walls and rose 

 bushes, but there was nothing like the singing we have at 

 home of a spring morning.* At the other end of the vil 

 lage was another inn &quot; The Blue Lion,&quot; I believe, and a tall 

 hostler opening the stable doors was dressed just as I wanted 

 to see him jockey -cap, long striped waistcoat, breeches, and 

 boots. 



As I returned I saw the farmer that had been at the inn 

 the night before, and asked him to let me see his cows. He 

 said they were coming down the lane, and if I went with him 

 I should meet them. Passing a group of well-built, neat, 

 low buildings, he said they were the squire s kennels. They 

 were intended for greyhounds, but he had his pointers in 

 them now. 



&quot; The squire s ! But where s the squire s house ?&quot; 



&quot; Yon s the hall,&quot; pointing to a distant group of trees, 

 above which a light smoke was rising straight up in the calm 



* An English friend, now in America, thinks I ain wr-onj in this. 



