A Brick House with a Past 



has come over the scene since one day, 

 now more than twenty years ago, a 

 party of city business men pulled up 

 at the old house to look over the farm, 

 of which it was the heart, with a view 

 towards purchasing. 



It seems an ordained part of old 

 Dame Nature's general scheme to 

 obliterate as soon as possible all traces 

 of departed activities. Streets and 

 rails, no matter what their importance 

 as commercial arteries, once abandoned 

 are soon claimed by grasses and other 

 plants appointed for such tasks. The 

 apparently indestructible yields at 

 last to the inexorable levers and ful- 

 crums with which old Father Time is 

 so generously provided. And so we 

 find that year by year the vines and 

 trees and shrubbery are gripping 

 tighter and tighter in their sheltering 

 embrace these old brick walls. It is, 

 in truth, now so well protected from 

 the vulgar public gaze that unless you 

 know just where it stands you will 



[23] 



