24 AROUND AN OLD HOMESTEAD. 



and one of currants. On a hillside gently sloping from 

 the house innumerable clusters of white and purple 

 grapes hang, luscious and sweet, beneath the sheltering 

 shade of the broad green leaves of the vineyard. Pas- 

 tures flank the roadsides, and fields of clover, wheat, 

 and corn, where golden pumpkins dot the brown earth 

 -in the autumn. A large woods serves as a wind-break 

 / toward the West, and its masses of dark foliage and 

 the antlered tips intensify and prolong the beauty and 

 , mystery of the slow-dying sunsets. 



I think of Horace on his Sabine farm. Sometimes, 

 too, as I look at it, I think of Hawthorne and the old 

 manse. 'T is an ideal life otium cum digmtate. 

 What more could one wish? 



The homestead is one of the few old places now 

 left in this vicinity. Almost all the others have become 

 too modernized. But it is not like our modern houses. 

 It has never been rented; and the people who live in 

 it have never moved. So, although not far from the 

 city, the homestead is suggestive always of old-time 

 memories and old-time customs, and affords one of the 

 unusual opportunities, nowadays, where we can see 

 old-time ways still practiced, the wheat cradled, the 

 maple sap boiled in kettles, soft soap made from the 

 wood ashes, and the open fire in the sitting-room. 



During one season ("befo' de wah") as many as 

 one hundred and fifty thousand hogs were driven past 

 along the turnpike down to the city of Cincinnati, at 

 that time the great pork market of the country. The 

 old homestead became a sort of tavern at such times, 

 and the drovers used to stop over night. The road 

 would become all ruts and wallows. But all that has 



